


The Mixtape

by Calebski



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arguments, Break Up, Established Relationship, Existing work continuations, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Happy Ever Afters, Hogwarts Era, Multi, Multi pairings, One-Shots, Other, Pictures of You Universe, Post War, Post-Break Up, Secret Relationship, Unrequited Love, Unspoken Love, Veela Mates, coffee shop AU, multiple AUs, unexpected relationships, wolf mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-01-16 02:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 56,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calebski/pseuds/Calebski
Summary: A collection of song prompt one-shots featuring new pairings and continuations/ outtakes from existing stories.





	1. SIDE A: TRACK 1 Jealous Guy

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A collection of one-shots, all based on song prompts. Some of these will be random pairings, and some will be continuations (or possibly outtakes) of stories I have already completed. This first one is from the Pictures of You Universe and takes place after the epilogue.

AWARDS for this collection:  
Winner "Lovely Ladies" Best Femslash Granger Enchanted Awards 2018 (for Tracks 5-7)

Track Listings for Side A:  
**Track 1: Jealous Guy** / John Lennon [1988] (Antonin Dolohov x Hermione Granger) _Pictures of You Universe_  
**Track 2: Send My Love** / Adele [2015] (Ginny Weasley x Harry Potter / Daphne Greengrass x Harry Potter / Ginny Weasley x Blaise Zabini)  
**Track 3: Something** / George Harrison [1970] (Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger / Viktor Krum x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 4: Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own** / U2 [2004] (Reuben Yaxley x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 5: Take Me To Church** / Hozier [2013] (Pansy Parkinson x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 6: Umbrella** / Rihanna [2007] (Fleur Delacour x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 7: True Colours** / Cyndi Lauper [1986] (Lavender Brown x Parvati Pail)  
**Track 8: All of Me** / John Legend [2013] (Oliver Wood x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 9: Wish You Were Here** / Pink Floyd [1975] (Rabastan Lestrange x Luna Lovegood) _Pictures of You Universe_  
**Track 10: Sitting, Waiting, Watching** / Jack Johnson [2005] (Anthony Goldstein x Hermione Granger)

* * *

**SIDE A - TRACK 1**

Pictures of You Universe [Antonin Dolohov x Hermione Granger]

 _I was feeling insecure_  
_You might not love me anymore_  
_I was shivering inside_  
_I was shivering inside_  
_Oh I didn't mean to hurt you_  
_I'm sorry that I made you cry_  
_Oh my I didn't want to hurt you  
I'm just a jealous guy_

Jealous Guy / John Lennon [1988]

* * *

Antonin launched through the floo, green flames licking at his ankles, in hot pursuit of his extremely agitated wife. Despite Hermione’s much shorter stature, her heel clad feet and the changes that had affected her body in recent months, she was still managing to outstrip him. Antonin heard the others follow behind him, but he paid their eventual audience no mind. Instead, he raced down the corridor heading for the main stairs.

The very moment he put one foot on the bottom step the curly-haired witch he adored spun from her place nearing the upstairs landing. “Antonin Alexei Dolohov if you put one more foot on this staircase, I am divorcing you,” she spat before gripping the full skirt of her dress and continuing upwards in a furious stomp.

Antonin did not enjoy the whip noises Yax and Rabastan called over his shoulder, especially as they were extremely hypocritical, at least in Rabastan’s case. He had watched the formerly feared Death Eater crawl on his hands and knees through a muddy field only the week before to help Luna catch a creature she thought she saw.

Turning to them scowl at them, Antonin quickly detected that Reuben's gaze was following Hermione’s retreating form, his friend’s _appreciation_ of her developing figure was likely to be the death of one of them, possibly both if Hermione caught them fighting about it. Antonin had always been possessive and jealous when it came to his wife, but that had kicked into a higher gear when she had told him she was pregnant, carrying his children, two of them, as it turned out.

Antonin had never expected life would bring him this when Hermione had agreed to marry him he would have been happy to live the rest of his days just the two of them, but he couldn’t deny the thrill it gave him to know he would have a true family. The small picture with the matching heartbeats was now just as worn as those that he had already come to treasure.

Antonin had suppressed his oppressive need to wrap Hermione in cotton wool for the first few months. She’d already had enough to contend with as Rodolphus and Severus were ready to call a Healer anytime she so much as sneezed. But now Hermione was just over six months, and Antonin was beginning to struggle. With her petite frame and the fact she was carrying two babies she was a little bigger than most women at her stage - not that he would ever risk mentioning that - but she wouldn't slow down.

Sucking up air through his nose Antonin began up the stairs, he knew how empty Hermione’s threat was, deep down at least. She always tried to run away from their arguments, and he never let her, he simply couldn’t stand any prolonged period of unrest between them. He had spent too much of his life cooped up in silent boxes without the ability to communicate and fix the issues that he had replayed in his mind. Antonin would not allow it in his marriage.

When he hesitantly entered their room Hermione whipped her head in his direction and scowled but otherwise said nothing so Antonin, sensing no immediate danger, moved cautiously inside, keeping his eyes locked on her wand arm, he had learnt that lesson the hard way.

Hermione was removing jewellery, aggressively, he wasn't quite sure  _how_ she managed it and this wasn't the first time he had seen it, but he still marvelled every time. Antonin moved to sit on the side of their bed, out of the way, knowing by now that as she was on a tear she would want to pace about to release her frustration, though her movements were more awkward now.

Antonin tried to keep his eyes on the swell of Hermione’s stomach and was determined not to let them drift to a location slightly higher, she was taking off her heels, and he, Yax and all of the others knew just how pinpoint her accuracy could be with a shoe. One summer, Hermione had been wearing wedges, Severus had threatened to place a sticking charm on all of her footwear when he got clumped in the side of the face with the cork bottom sandal. Though those two always seemed just on the verge of strangling each other.

Antonin took one last look at her dainty calf, elevated in the black patent pump before she removed it. Hermione had been complaining of discomfort all night, but he didn't see why he should have to put up with her moaning, he had told her not to wear them, and she had ignored him, grumbling something about someone called Thumbelina.

It had all been going _so well_ , everyone had come to the house in Sochi and had a wonderful Christmas break. For once all of them were able to stay till New Year, and so Rodolphus had booked for them to go for an evening of dinner and dancing, the restaurant had been beautiful and the food incredible, and everyone had looked resplendent in their formal wear.

They rarely made such an effort anymore, family dinners were always very casual, but Antonin had been surprisingly keen this time. They didn't have long until the twins were born and he wanted to enjoy a night out with his wife while he still had her all to himself. Or, as to himself as he could with the rest of their gang around.

Hermione had picked a long velvet dress in the darkest green, it hugged around her swollen middle and Antonin, as ever, though she had never looked more beautiful. Sadly he didn't think he was the only one there that had made the same assessment.  

After the dinners had been cleared away, the large tables were relocated to allow the room for dancing. Hermione had excused herself to go to the bathroom, one of the fifty or so trips she made in any four hours. It was only ten or so minutes later when Antonin realised she had been gone too long. A hangover from the war and the man he would always be, he was constantly on the lookout for danger, especially when it concerned her. His eyes glided around the large venue for a while, and then, he saw Hermione at the bar. Antonin could only see her back for a second and then Hermione turned, revealing her laughing face and the man in front of her, a _young_ man, an _attractive_ young man who had his hand on her arm and was laughing right along with her.

“Oh that doesn't look good,” Reuben said from next to him, glancing over his shoulder. The teasing tone in his voice was utterly lost on Antonin as his rage grew.

Severus looked above his glass, eyeing Antonin with the kind of exasperated disdain that the potions master specialised in. “She will kill you if you go over there, Antonin. She is just _talking_ to someone, an acquaintance no doubt. Calm yourself.”

As sank further into his heavily patterned bedspread Antonin reasoned that Severus had given him excellent advice. Unfortunately, he hadn't followed it. What he _had done_ was to march straight over there and remove the man's hand from his wife’s person, almost breaking it in the process if the noise it made was any indication.

Pulled from his recollection, Antonin heard Hermione snort and mutter something under her breath as she sent her evening bag flying across the room. “I’m sorry Solnyshko,” he began.

Hermione turned to him, clad in just a nightgown, her eyes thin slits radiating anger, “Sorry for what Antonin? Completely humiliating me? Failing to listen? Not being able to control your temper?” her voice travelled higher and higher as she yelled at him. He was pretty sure she wasn't actually looking for an answer to any of her questions, so he kept himself quiet. “He was doing no harm, he was merely asking me how I was,” she continued, slumping a little.

But Antonin could not see reason. “He was very _familiar_ with you Hermione, have you met him before?” he bit out.

“Yes” she replied, her tone equally hostile, “he sits on the Wizengamot, Antonin, as I tried to explain while you were attempting to crush his bones between your fingers.”

“Considering you had met him before he didn't seem to know you were with anyone... Touching you like that…”

“Antonin, I am _heavily pregnant_ , even if our marriage had not made front page news I’m not exactly able to hide my advertisement of a man in my life at the moment,” she said as she gestured wildly to her huge bump.

“You would want to hide it?” he yelled.

Hermione looked fit to combust for a moment but then her face cocked to the side, and she regarded him as if a realisation had entered her mind. “Antonin?” she asked more softly, “what is this about?”

“You know what it's about,” he seethed, “I don’t like seeing people touch you.”

“I know,” she nodded, and Antonin was sure she did, it had come up many times in their marriage. “But you haven't had an explosion of that magnitude for a long time. There's something else isn't there?”

Antonin dropped his gaze to the hands in his lap and sucked in a ragged breath. There was no point in lying to this witch, not that he had ever seriously tried, and if he wanted to resolve this, he needed to air the real issue.

“You took your ring off,” he admitted quietly, looking anywhere but in her direction.

“What?” Hermione asked bemused.

Antonin finally me her eyes, and let her see how hurt he was. “Last week... you took your wedding ring off before you went to work and then put it back on when you got home before dinner. I thought at first that it was a mistake that you took it off for some small reason and forgot it before you left. But then you did it the next day and the next. Why… why would you do that?”

Hermione’s pale cheeks flushed, and Antonin felt his chest constrict. She padded over to the bed and sat down next to him, the movement taking a bit of effort. Her own eyes fell to the carpet as she answered him in a small voice, speaking so softly he couldn't make out her words at all.

“What was that?” he asked past the lump in his throat.

Hermione sighed. “I said it doesn't fit... Okay?” she admitted. “I have expanded it as much as I can magically and I can't anymore, my fingers are swollen just like the rest of me and it hurts to wear, but I _hate_ not having it on, so I started taking it off during the day for a rest.”

A small sheepish smile tugged at Antonin’s lips, relief overwhelming his embarrassment at having asked in the first place. “Why didn't you say anything?”

“Because I didn't want to draw attention to it, I’m already as big as a house and… well, it's not very sexy is it?” Hermione grumbled.

Antonin begged to differ. “I think you are _very_ sexy.”

“You would say that,” she dismissed.

He wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “You are carrying my children, Hermione, there is nothing that could make you more desirable than that,” he dropped a hand to rub her belly while he leant down to kiss her.

“I’m still mad,” she gasped out between open-mouthed kisses.

“Let me make it up to you,” he whispered as he laid her out on the bed beneath him and edged up the bottom of her nightgown.

* * *

Yaxley moved the glass he’d had pressed against his friend’s bedroom door in a quick, jerking movement. “Crisis averted back downstairs everyone,” he said with urgency.

Luna and Rabastan shared a knowing smug grin and moved down the corridor, Severus and Astrid behind, Rodolphus, however, lingered.  “Hang on, I want to check she’s alright,” he argued ripping the glass from Reuben’s hand.

Yaxley put his hand on his shoulder. “Any moment now you won't need that glass, and I don't want to have to Obliviate you.”

Realisation dawned on Dolph’s face, and he dropped the glass on the floor as if it had somehow been a part of what was going on behind the door. “Ah, ok, erm, firewhisky?” he blurted

“Firewhisky,” Reuben agreed. 


	2. SIDE A: TRACK 2 Send Your Love

**SIDE A - TRACK 2**

[Harry Potter x Ginny Weasley / Harry Potter x Daphne Greengrass / Ginny Weasley x Blaise Zabini]

 _This was all you, none of it me_  
_You put your hands on, on my body and told me_  
_Mmm_  
_You told me you were ready_  
_For the big one, for the big jump_  
_I'd be your last love everlasting you and me_  
_Mmm_  
_That was what you told me_  
_I'm giving you up_  
_I've forgiven it all  
You set me free-ee_

Send My Love / Adele [2015]

* * *

Ginny barely regarded the object she had picked up in a sightless rage as she launched it against a wall in the decrepit, dusty, Black library. She didn’t care if it was a cherished photograph or a priceless heirloom. Nothing mattered at that moment. The satisfying crash of glass and the crunch of the dented mouldy plaster spurred her on as she pounded whatever she could get her hands on against the unforgiving surface until she was spent. It didn’t matter how many things she broke into a million pieces. Nothing made her feel better. Nothing would. Exhausted, she slid down the opposite wall, panting in defeat.

Five years, _five fucking years_ she had wasted on Harry _fucking_ Potter.

Ginny’s head dropped forward onto her arms, and she wished for tears. She wanted to feel heartbroken, but she knew that was still to come. For now, she felt so angry she could hear the pounding of blood in her ears, she could almost taste what it would be like to hex the feckless wizard into next week.

Ginny had dreamt away most of her youth pining for Harry, a silly schoolgirl crush that had morphed into real, deep understanding and love when she had begun to mature. Ginny had tried to forget about Harry, but all she discovered after dating Dean or Michael was that no softy spoken words or heated touches from other boys did anything to extinguish the precious flame of affection she was carrying, for her brother’s best friend.

When Harry had had finally told Ginny he returned her feelings it had felt like everything had gone full circle, like destiny, like they had always been _supposed_ to get to this point. It was the fairytale she read as a child; it was all the advice her mother had given her. It was perfect. It was the end to every rainbow. But Voldemort didn't agree.

The war separated them. Harry, the great hope of them all, was off to fight on some ill thought out mission, and Ginny was left to fend for those that remained behind at the mercy of the Carrow’s. That time was about as far from a fairytale as it was possible to be, and yet it had darkly contributed to it. The worse her nightmare became the more glistening and desirable the shiny light at the end of the tunnel was. Some days it was all she thought about. Looking back, Ginny knew it was the _idealisation_ process that had gone on in her own mind, and Harry’s _,_ that had ruined them before they had even begun. Fantasy doesn’t match up to reality. Not a once, not ever. But most people are willing to let their dreams come down and settle into the mundane for the right person. But not for the not-quite-right.

When it was over, Ginny had been locked in grief for her fallen brother. She hadn't questioned her and Harry being _right_ for each other. It was a foregone conclusion; everyone expected it, especially them. In any case, they needed each other. They poured comfort into each other; Harry found relief in the end of the conflict, and the end of the long-standing expectations placed upon his shoulders. Ginny relished in him being _finally_ hers after all this time. They could run away, they could live the lives they wanted. _That was the dream, wasn’t it?_

Only Hermione had spoken out against the match, albeit quietly when they were alone. She had urged her - in Hermione’s own awkward way - to take time. “What's the rush?” she had asked, “You are still _so young_ Ginny.”

Still raw from not being included in on the mission, Ginny discounted the curly-haired witch’s words as being assertions rooted in jealousy, she questioned the motives of her friend and believed that Hermione was determined to split her and Harry up at any cost. Ginny saw it all much more clearly now.

Harry who had held her while she cried, Harry who had been so _desperate_ to cement their relationship as the _only_ thing they would need. Harry who announced - without waiting for a response - that it was over.

Over. Over. Over.

* * *

It was just two months later that she heard about Harry's new girlfriend, Daphne Greengrass. Daphne Greengrass with her perfect skin, unmarked by freckles, her perfectly _ordinary_ pretty brown hair and her delicate rosebud mouth that had probably never uttered a curse word in her life.

Ginny hated her immediately, but she hated herself for it more.

* * *

Six months after her ex had begun, _very publically,_  dating another woman, it was seemingly left to dutiful, reluctant, Hermione to deliver the news that he was getting engaged. Ginny felt to all the world like she was still the boy-who-lived’s discarded girlfriend and now he was getting married. Her whole life, every plan she had ever had for the future had fallen to the floor in tatters. _And he was getting married_.

Ginny had moved in with Hermione - at Hermione's insistence - when she’d had to leave Grimmauld Place, not that she had ever liked it. The idea of moving back to The Burrow to face her disappointed mother every day had been unthinkable, so she had been more than grateful for the offer of a place, Hermione’s flat quickly became her haven.

Ginny said nothing when her friend - for a friend she was - relayed the news, even when Hermione had stumbled out that Harry had given Daphne his mother’s ring, though, Ginny did apologise for the broken teapot and cups the next morning.

His mother’s ring meant he loved her, that Harry _loved_ Daphne Greengrass. He must have felt a more profound affection for her in six months than he had achieved over eight years of knowing Ginny. Mostly Ginny hated that she could deduce so much from his behaviour, that she still remembered him so well despite her now being worthless to him.

* * *

“The thing I hate the _most_ right,” Ginny slurred after her third glass of wine, “the thing I really _detest_ is the pity!"

Her audience of Hermione, Luna and Fleur nodded wonkily, each one clearly having consumed a fair amount of the fizzy pink stuff Luna had bought along with her.

“Everyone _still_ thinks I’m like I was when I was, what twelve?… _Obsessed_ with him... like our relationship was totally one-sided,” Ginny gestured wildly with her arms and her latest drink slopped all over the patterned carpet causing Hermione to frown. “It wasn't. He was the one pulling for the marriage and kids and everything… he wanted that security... I was just happy _to be_ for a while.”

“Maybe it just wasn't right” Luna began dreamily, her head resting on her open palm, elbow propped up on her crossed leg, “your auras were never that compatible.”

“Also,” Hermione started decidedly, pointing her finger at Ginny and squinting as if trying to clear off double vision, “you have so much _fire_ , Ginny, don't you want someone who… who... I don't know…. ignites it?”

Ginny smiled, Hermione could no doubt do with someone to ignite her own fires. She got to her feet, swaying unsteadily before raising what remained of her wine into the air. “To Daphne Greengrass, may he treat her better, the useless wanker.”

Luna giggled loudly before abruptly stopping and leaving the room at speed, presumably to find a bathroom.

* * *

Ginny’s drunken toast appeared to have come true exactly a year later. She was at the back of a large, overly ornate dance hall, her back propped against a well stocked, all paid for bar, as Harry twirled a white dress clad Daphne about the room, grinning like a lunatic.

She didn't feel angry, not anymore, she didn't even feel resignation, the time wasted still stung though, that and the concern on everyone's faces as they looked at her throughout the day. Even her own mother seemed to check on her during the service as if she would suddenly storm the altar and raise an objection. It had been nearly two years, couldn’t they stop treating her like some fragile snowflake ready to crack into a million screaming pieces at the slightest provocation?

Her all too familiar internal monologue was cut short as someone approaching the bar got her attention. “Hey, Red, long time.”

Ginny casually gave him the once over before returning her eyes to the dance floor. “Likewise, Zambini.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

She considered for only a millisecond before internally shrugging. She had already stuck the entire evening in her ‘fuck it’ bucket. _What was the worst that could happen?_ “Whisky please,” she replied eventually, making sure not to make too much of his offer and was rewarded when his eyebrows rose. Ginny smiled to herself; for some reason, she found it immensely funny that she had managed to surprise him.

“So what are you doing here? I would have thought ….”

“Thought I would have been at home, crying into lukewarm tea, lamenting the loss of my youth and practising my knitting?” she responded with bored sarcasm.

“No,” Blaise replied, his tone as unruffled as his suit. “Though, I would have expected you to be smart enough to pull the ex card, to get out of attending this thing, like I should've done.”

“I didn't realise that Daphne was your ex.”

“She was. We were together for two years before she met Potter.”

“I’m sorry?” she replied hesitantly, unsure of his tone.

“Don't be. It wasn't going anywhere. Daphne is a great girl, but she's... well, she's a bit meek and mild from my taste.”

It was Ginny’s turn to raise her eyebrows as she watched Blaise’s gaze sweep over her form-fitting red dress. She’d said she would come all right, but she refused to look anything less than a knockout. Judging by the monstrosities Luna and Hermione had been subjected to in the form of bridesmaids dresses she had made the right call.

“Oh,” she said faux-innocently, “and what exactly _is_ your taste Mr Zabini?”

Blaise took a long sip of his drink before sliding closer to her, leaning against the bar with a restained ease that spoke of prowess on the dancefloor or well, any floor. “I'm Italian, by heritage, I like a bit of fire in my women, it’s like whisky really, it's not doing anything for you unless it's got a bit of a kick. Know of anyone that fits that description, Red? Someone that might be interested in some adventure?”

Ginny turned her head to regard Blaise from underneath her lashes. “You know what, Mr Zabini? I think I might.”


	3. SIDE A: TRACK 3 Something

**SIDE A - TRACK 3**

[Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger / Hermione Granger x Viktor Krum]

 _Something in the way she moves_  
_Attracts me like no other lover_  
_Something in the way she woos me_  
_I don't want to leave her now  
You know I believe her now_

Something / George Harrison [1970]

* * *

Draco looked down at the palm of his hand, his _rejected_ hand, as his brow pinched into an incredulous frown. He couldn’t believe _Harry Potter_ had turned him down, of all the… His ramping aggravation was cut short by a tall, elderly witch who introduced herself as Professor McGonagall. ‘Gryffindor House’ his father’s voice mentally supplied. Draco didn’t try to fight or hide the scornful look that crossed his face, though he moved against the wall as she directed without protest.

That was when he saw _her_ for the first time.

Draco had looked up, not wanting to waste a perfectly good sneer intending to direct it at Potter when he got a glimpse of wild curly hair just over the idiot’s shoulder. The girl underneath the mad, springy tendrils was tiny, _tiny_ and… different.

Draco looked for some vague parallel between _this creature_ and the girls that he had been brought up around and found nothing. There was no poise about her; she held herself with no grace. Her huge eyes were set into warm skin, and they seemed to reflect every emotion, every thought that crossed her mind. She wasn’t beautiful or refined, far from it. She was too eager, too kinetic, too _everything_. But, she was something. She was not bland. Draco could give her that much.

Suddenly her name was called, and she skipped off in a nervous flutter that would have made him snigger if he hadn’t felt so adrift with all of the realisations of the last thirty minutes. ‘Granger, Hermione’ the curt witch had said. Draco belatedly realised what that meant as the sorting hat threatened to sink to her shoulders. The call to the cheering lions was the last nail in the coffin.

His eyes still followed her as she walked to the table, and that’s when he saw it, saw her ball up all of her fear and nerves, and her little head lifted up, and her chin jutting out as she folded smoothly between two redheads already at the table.

There was something... _not so different after all_.

* * *

Three weeks they hadn’t been talking to her. By his own admission, albeit only to himself, Draco took an interest in the goings-on of Harry Potter, a lot of interest. So he had spotted almost at once when the trio became a duo. They had stopped waiting for her after classes, and she had stopped sitting with them at meals. She was always on her own it seemed. She still couldn’t keep out of it though. She always had to stick her nose in. It might have been her worst quality, though in truth there were too many to count.

After Potions, he and Potter had gotten into their usual exchange of insults, and she had just had to wait there and say her piece. Not even her friends wanted her there. Draco had turned instinctively to scream at her, to vent his frustration at her untouchability to her face, like it was her fault.

Jibes about her inferiority died on his tongue when he looked at her features. Anger made her eyebrows knot and her mouth twist, but it was her eyes that held him to the spot. The dark circles that had been deepening from weeks of neglect stood out firmly against her too pale face. He briefly wondered what would happen if he held his hand up against her skin, would there be much difference between them then?

Draco was suddenly aware he had been silent _too_ long, and he managed to stumble out something about them not being worth it before he barged down the corridor. He turned back when he got to the end, soon enough to see her on her own again. He watched her slump with more than the weight of her book bag as she seemed to will herself to move. He waited until she did; it shouldn’t have reassured him to watch her walk away.

* * *

Draco clutched the conjured ice cold cloth against his cheek for two seconds only to pull it away as soon as Pansy wasn’t looking. He placed his fingers gingerly against the bump that was already forming, waiting for the moment that the chill would recede and allow him to feel the flush of warmth her fist had caused.

He would never have believed her capable of punching someone in the face, least of all him. She had flown at him like a banshee, powered by some unknown force as her soft flesh collided with his. He wondered if she realised they had _never_ touched before. Draco did. It was almost his first thought as they came together in the most violent of ways. Which, was incredibly pathetic.

Unfortunately, Pansy came back and held a mirror up for him to view his injury. As she babbled on, Draco twisted himself so he could regard his pinked cheek, he swallowed his sigh and his hope for a scar.

* * *

Draco’s mouth dropped open alongside everyone else as she walked into the Great Hall draped on Viktor Krum’s arm. He’d no idea who she was going to attend the ball with, apart from some flimsy notion that it might have been the Weasel. He had been extra mean to the idiot in the last two weeks to make up for it. He’d had even momentarily thought that it might have been Potter, although, unlike the rest of the school, he was not under the illusion that anything was going on there. Draco watched her more than he watched Potter, which was saying something, and he _knew_ they were just friends. Not that it had stopped him from burning every article about their illicit teenage romance that crossed his path. _How scandalous would the press have found it if her interests had fallen in his direction?_

Draco’s fists balled as he observed the blatant ogling she received for most of the evening, his jaw clenched when he heard the red-headed fool scream at her. It was no secret that Draco disliked Ron Weasley, he had been trained to from the cradle but it was more than that, he hated him for more than just his name and political leanings. Ron could have her, and he did not.

When she ran from the hall, he couldn't stop his legs from moving to follow her, and it didn't take long to track her down. It may have been years since she was almost reduced to a hat stand but she was still small for her age, she couldn't get far. Draco heard sniffing at the end of the corridor and moved into a shadowed alcove. He breathed so heavily he considered silencing himself.

Minutes passed, and her tears didn't stop, and Draco was at war with himself. He could go over now. He could, just this once, and say something, maybe not something nice but something on its way to comforting. No one would believe her if she ever said anything, not that he thought she would, at least he didn't think she would.

Just as he had resolved to go ahead and risk a moment of contentment he heard footsteps in the corridor and Draco instinctively pushed himself further against the wall.

Draco couldn’t tear his eyes away when Krum bent down in front of her, and the Bulgarian softly swiped his thumb over her damp cheeks. He had never seen the Quidditch star not scowling before. Even from a distance, he could see that he treated Hermione as if she were a delicate flower, the way they were raised to treat women of consequence. Draco hated him for it.

Krum spoke too low for Draco to hear the words but whatever he said had the desired effect, Hermione’s head came up, and she offered him a hesitant smile, her teeth attacking her bottom lip as her wet cheeks glistened in the dim light.

The way she moved… _she had no idea what it did to him_.

* * *

Draco sped up the steps to the top of the Owlery with his letter grasped firmly in his right hand. He had immediately written to his parents after Professor Umbridge had pinned his shiny silver ‘i’ shaped badge on his robes that morning. He couldn’t wait to run into Weasley.

But, the weasel wasn’t the Gryffindor Prefect he ran into. Draco caught sight of her a moment before she realised he was there, she was so engrossed in her letter, and as he was not usually on his own with her in any way, he could resist the opportunity to speak to her, in the only way he could.

“Finally taught your savage parents how to use the postal service have you, Granger? I take back everything I said about you. You really must be the brightest witch of your age to have achieved such a  feat.”

Draco drank in the explosion of pink that drifted up to her throat, his vision uninterrupted as her mad hair had been dragged back into a loose ponytail.

She huffed but stepped as if to walk around him, but Draco wasn’t having that. Lunging forward he made to snatch the parchment out of her hands, she tried to deflect his progress, but he was quicker, darting after the letter like it was a tiny winged ball.

Draco ripped it from her fingers and triumphantly held it above her head before spinning to turn his back on her. “Let’s see what Muggle, mummy dearest has to say shall we?” he mocked, though the attempt at humour fell away as his eyes rested on the consistent spiky letters that covered the page, he shuffled, _three pages_. He recognised the script instantly, the boy’s prized signature resided on one of his practise snitches.

“Krum?” he asked incredulously.

Hermione seized his moment of inattention to steal back the parchment and speed away from him down the corridor, Draco wondered if her eagerness spoke to her desire to continue reading her _very_ long letter or just to get away from him.

The way she moved… _he didn’t like it_.

* * *

Draco slunk against the cooling stone of the corridor wall and willed his headache to abate, or his hands to stop shaking, one of the two would be nice, he didn’t expect to achieve both. He ran his hands over his sternum gingerly, more scars to add to his ever-growing collection. He wondered if Snape had told the Dark Lord yet? Would the news of his attack work for or against him? Who could say?

That was when he heard her voice, Draco stilled for a moment wondering if he was imagining it, _again_. But no, he could hear the whispered responses of Potter. Before he could question himself, he moved closer.

“Into the… Malfoy was there and… argument…. curse… I didn’t know.”

Draco’s lip curled at Potter’s weak explanation of the events that left him fighting for his life on the flooded bathroom floor. If Snape hadn’t been there, he would be dead, as it was the boy-who-lived got detention, a fact that he seemed to have just related to Hermione.

“You could have killed him Harry!” her voice was much clearer than the others, he had got her in a snit enough times to know when she was _truly_ agitated, this appeared to be one of those times.

Whatever Potter said in his defence didn’t appease her as a moment later she was stomping past his hiding spot, blissfully unaware, huffing loudly and mumbling to herself.

Draco wanted to yell after her, to let her know that he was _still_ suffering. For a moment he imagined ripping open his shirt and showing her the spider web of lines that covered his upper body. How would that affect her feelings? Would it be enough to turn her against Potter for good? He didn’t think so. But it was a nice thought. Draco held it with him until he had his breath back and could continue walking without the aid of the wall for support.

* * *

Draco felt the air leave his body as she was forced onto her back on the dirty floor at what had once been his home. He felt his heart constrict as the first curse hit its mark. When the blade collided with her skin numbness seeped into to his frame, he couldn’t move, couldn’t look away.

It couldn’t be real. It was probably a nightmare, his _worst nightmare_ but one all the same.

She never told. It was nearly an hour, and she never told. Stupid, brave, reckless, wonderful her.

I don’t want to leave her now were his last thoughts before she disappeared again with a pop.

* * *

After the battle, Draco watched her as his mother and father spoke to the Aurors. There would be trials, consequences of being on the wrong side. None of it was news. He had suffered from the fate of being on the wrong side since he was eleven.

She was talking to Luna Lovegood, standing slightly away from everyone else as if she didn’t know her place. Right then, at that very moment, Draco looked at her and saw the little girl she had been, all the excitement that he’d initially scorned had drained away.  This girl, ravaged by war, looked still, unnaturally so for her and though she moved it was as if she was no longer in control of it, fluttering like a leaf in the wind.

Then, a broad chest swept into his view, Krum. He came up behind Hermione and lifted her clean off the floor.

The embrace didn’t affect Draco, he’d had _years_ to get used to seeing her like that, she was a very affectionate girl, but the way she sagged in relief into Viktor’s hold stabbed at him, the relaxation of her frame mocking his affection.

The way she moved… _brought pain_.

* * *

Draco straightened his tie for the fifth time, to give him something to do with his hands until he could justify another drink. He only needed to stay another hour, and then he could sink himself into oblivion.

He had been to more weddings than funerals that year, which was saying something, something depressing, but _something_ all the same. As was the way of all purebloods in Europe when one scion got married they were all invited, hence his presence here at _her_ wedding. He had never expected to be there.

He watched as _Hermione Krum_ got twirled inexpertly around the floor. For all of Viktor’s elegance and grace in the air, he possessed none of it on the dancefloor. It didn't seem to worry her though. Every fudged step made her beam wider until the pair of them were laughing almost to the point of hysterics, some shared joke no doubt.

Draco didn’t want to know the specific reason for her mirth, he allowed himself one more resolute glance at the warmth that lit up her face, lit up the whole room, him, and turned around to face the bar, again.

The way she moved… _she would never know_.


	4. SIDE A: TRACK 4 Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own

**SIDE A - TRACK 4**

[Hermione Granger x Reuben Yaxley]

And it's you when I look in the mirror  
_And it's you when I don't pick up the phone  
_Sometimes you can't make it on your own

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own / U2 [2004]

* * *

Reuben Yaxley shut his large cupboard door and put his arm into the crisp white shirt he had retrieved from its depths. He avoided looking at his mirrored reflection on the door. He wasn't in the mood to stare himself in the face. Somehow he was able to stamp down his deeper feelings until he accidentally or otherwise regarded himself in the cold hard light of day. When he saw himself in the mirror there was no denying it anymore, the pain was written all over his face. She had gone.

Reuben was still in shock. He was sure Hermione was the first woman to have ever walked out on him, and he had given others plenty more reason. He ran his fingers over the cravat he would usually favour before sighing and picking up the Muggle tie he had purchased. Reuben tried tying it a couple of times like the salesman had shown him, before he gave up and pointed his wand at it… knots he could handle. He had plenty of experience with knots. Emotions, however, they were a different story.

Reuben pulled a navy blue jacket over his shoulders and finally risked a glance at the mirror, taking in his usual formal attire with the minor changes he had made for the occasion. You'll do. He left his room, extinguishing lights as he went, moving towards the front door all while wondering if he was embarking on a fool's errand. She had wanted more. That was what she had said... more, more, _more_.              

Reuben had heard those words, or variants of that particular little speech, a million times in his life, and his typical response had ranged from total exasperation to complete ire depending on the situation. He was never one to mislead, Reuben was who he was, and he was always _very clear_ about his expectations and activities from the start.

But it was the way she said it to him, the way his Hermione had stood in the middle of his study staring at him while he was mid-rant before she gently placed her tumbler on the side of his desk. She hadn't whined, she hadn't cried or pleaded. Hermione had just looked pained then she told him. She didn't even ask. She was resigned that he would knock her back.

Hermione hadn’t waited for a response, not that one would have been particularly forthcoming seeing that Reuben had been stunned into silence. When she had finished speaking, she walked forward and stepped up on her toes to kiss his cheek, squeezing his arm that she had held onto for balance, and then, she left. By the time Reuben’s feet had come unstuck from the floor, Hermione was gone.

_How had it ever even got to this point?_

Yaxley walked out onto the path in front of his townhouse, a wine bottle clutched in hand before apparating to the leafy suburb. He thought for a moment that the apparition hadn’t agreed with him until he realised, with no small amount of horror, that he was _nervous_. He snorted and tried to shake the foreign feeling off. He wasn’t entirely successful. Meeting the parents was a big step, not that he'd ever taken it before, though arguably it was an even bigger one when you were inviting yourself.

A chill moved through the air and Reuben automatically stilled, the cold brought back the shadow of Azkaban that lingered in the edges of his mind, even though he had been out for two whole years this time.

When he was first released, it had been much worse. Reuben had been subjected to a three-month stay at St Mungo’s where the doctors had assessed his physical and mental health daily. The procedures had been intrusive and demeaning, and most days Reuben had wondered if he would have been happier back at the prison. That was when he had met Hermione.

Hermione Granger had become a healer after the war and was one of the teams assigned cases from what became known as the ‘Parolee Program’ for convicts released from Azkaban. Reuben was one of the first four to leave the prison and attempt to integrate back into wizarding society.

He had not reacted well to her presence initially, especially when he found that she had specially requested the position. Hermione had been there when he was first brought in, and Reuben cursed his luck to be around someone who would constantly remind him of the war. He had flinched when she touched him for the first time, though her touch was purely within the lines of what her job entailed, he hadn’t been expecting it. Hermione had registered his movement, and her eyes hardened, but she said nothing. Her silent judgement had infuriated him. Reuben had grabbed her by the wrist and applied as much pressure as he could, which must have been a minimal amount at the time, given his malnourished state.

“I don’t give a shit about your blood, you stupid girl,” he had rasped at her, his voice scratchy from lack of use. He hadn't been touched, not with any semblance of kindness at least, for the longest time.

Reuben did not make nursing him easy; he had sworn at Hermione, yelled at her, and, when none of those worked, he would make lewd comments in her hearing. She would offer no rebuke but he saw her blush, and he continued twice as hard after that.

Reuben couldn’t have said when things changed when it was precisely that he stopped resenting and started to desire her. In any case, the development was, bafflingly, mutual, and though Hermione was not willing to become involved while he was still a patient, he had managed to steal some heated kisses that indicated future passions, while still confined to his room.

Since Reuben had been released everything had been going well, great even. He found himself wanting to spend time with Hermione. She never tried to change him or scold him from his past behaviour. She just accepted him the way he came. That didn't mean they didn't argue, they did, frequently, though he held a suspicion that she liked it as much as he did.

Hermione was bright, and a lot more relaxed than people gave her credit for, but her worldview was still so black and white, it made her vulnerable. _That's why you care_ , Reuben would tell himself. He felt he owed it to her, to try to educate her about what she failed to see about people, about him. He wanted to keep her safe. Hermione had helped save him after all.

When they had started going out, Reuben had insisted it be casual, and Hermione had been fine with that, a little too fine for his ego if he was honest. He was soon to find that their versions of casual were very different. Reuben was accustomed to no strings, relationships that were limited to instances of exposed skin and staccato panting and one time even a pulley. Hermione’s definition meant nights in with comfortable clothes and junk food, as well as considerable passion. Reuben hadn't had much in the way of comfort for the last twenty years, so he went along with it.

Then, like it so often will, the real world stepped in and fucked it all up.

They had been on their way home from dinner, another thing that was not in Reuben’s traditional definition of casual, and they had run into little Potter and his wife. After he had gotten over the initial shock of thinking that James and Lily Potter been resurrected, Reuben had stood back with clenched fists as the boy wonder launched into full attack mode. Potter relentlessly laid into Hermione, bringing up a million questions he had over her ‘life choices’. Thoroughly enraged, Reuben only managed to get in one crude comment before Hermione turned and threatened to silence him if he interfered again.  

The confrontation went on for several minutes, and as a further blow, Reuben realised that he had believed Hermione had already told her friends she had been seeing him. While he had no interest in _ever_ spending time with them, he had expected them to know, and to disapprove from a distance. When they got back to his townhouse, he raged at her, ignoring the nagging voice in his mind that whined that Hermione had probably already had enough angst for one evening. He couldn’t hold back, his anger was still coursing through his blood, both from not being able to defend her and her lack of disclosure.

Until, like is so often the case, during an argument the real issue came to the fore without intention.

“So I'm just your dirty little secret am I, Hermione?”

Reuben _never_ called Hermione by name, not ever, not anymore. It was always an affectionate pet name designed to irritate her and make him laugh. He intended to a leak a sign of emotional withdrawal, and the jerk of her face let him know that she felt it.

“It’s… not like… I mean,” she spluttered.

“Come off it! Do you think because of all that time inside I am not right in the head? Is this your walk on the wild side before settling down, marrying some Ministry bore and dropping a few kids?” His tone was low and scathing.

“I…”

“Then what, Hermione? Fucking what?!” He boomed.

That was when Reuben saw it, the watery sheen across her eyes, and her slumped shoulders and her over full lips. Defeat radiated from Hermione’s small frame, and that was when she told him that she wanted more. How she hadn't wanted to tell her friends because she knew they would react badly and it didn't seem worth the upset because of his desire for a temporary arrangement.

Then she left, and Reuben had the pure discomfort of knowing that he had orchestrated his own failure. Now, he was stood in front of the small if nicely kept house with a horrible crashing sense of déjà vu.

* * *

He rang the bell and waited, moving back off the step so as not to crowd the door. With his height, Reuben had found since trying to integrate himself back into wizarding society that sometimes he had to actively _try_ not to be intimidating. At least when he wanted to.

The door wrenched open a moment later, and suddenly Hermione was standing in front of him again, he felt something deep within him relax. Sadly it didn’t appear to be his voicebox. Despite, her opening the door being Reuben’s best case scenario, the sight of her still brought him up short, and it seemed he wasn’t alone. The broad smile and creases around Hermione’s eyes immediately dropped when she saw him, and she stood there motionless, vacant.

A moment later another woman appeared at the door, pushing Hermione a little to the side to see who was there. Jean Granger was taller than her daughter and her frame more willowy. She looked upon him with a smile. “Hermione?” she inquired softly.

Not wanting to wait and see what Hermione would say, Reuben finally took control of the situation. “Mrs Granger, my name is Reuben Yaxley, forgive the interruption. I unexpectedly had a change of plans this evening, and, knowing Hermione would be here, I came to see if I could have a moment of her time.”

_Three ...two… one._

“Of course, well, you must come in, and please call me Jean. We were about to have dinner, should I make you up a plate?” she answered brightly before she leant down to mock whisper to Hermione, “I take it this was the man you were telling me about?”

That knocked Reuben off course, as did the flush on his Hermione’s cheeks. He had banked on Muggle mothers being the same as those in the wizarding world - who would appreciate old fashioned manners - and he had been proved right when Jean Granger invited him into her home, but he hadn’t been expecting her to _know_ about him.

He made to turn to Hermione to judge her expression, but she had backed away from the door to hold it wider for his entry. Reuben walked through and removed his coat. He saw Hermione’s eyebrows shoot up at his choice of attire and couldn’t help his smirk.

Jean continued chatting as they walked through the house into the lounge, and Reuben tried not to catalogue the items that flooded his vision. The house looked different with furnishings. When he had come here last there were no traces of life whatsoever it felt... warmer now.

As they moved into the dining room, he was introduced to Hermione’s father. Mark Granger was a kindly looking man with wiry dark hair and keen brown eyes. Hermione seemed to be a complete blend of both her parents.

Sitting down at the table Reuben did his best not to look at the witch that sat down next to him, and when he felt her eyes on him from time to time, he ignored it. He had enough to deal with looking at the plate in front of him. Reuben had been truthful in the hospital when he told Hermione that he didn't care about her blood, he didn't, but some things were hard-wired, and looking at Muggle food, prepared by Muggles about to be consumed in a Muggle home made his hand shake as he picked up his fork. That was until he saw her glare levelled at him. He also saw the faint line of a smirk on her mouth, and he read it for the challenge it was before he turned back to eat with gusto. _Point to me I think._

The conversation moved around many topics though the expected one of his relationship with Hermione didn't come up, whether that was as she had asked them not to or because of his unexpected arrival he couldn't tell. But then a much worse topic arose.

“So, Reuben, did you fight in the war?” Mark Granger asked conversationally.

He felt Hermione stiffen beside him but he was undeterred, he was a grown man and had been for a long time. “Yes,” he answered plainly.

For the first time that evening Reuben saw Mark Granger as a parent, not just a man, and not just a Muggle. He watched the man’s eyes soften, and he realised he had thought that was the right answer.

“Have you got a medal like Hermione?” he asked, showing both his pride in his daughter and an underlining approval of him as a potential suitor.

“No,” Reuben replied. He thought he heard Hermione exhale roughly, but he wasn't done. He couldn’t chastise her for secrets and do the same himself. If she told her parents he would be open with them. “I wasn't on the same side.”

The atmosphere in the room went from jovial to ice in a mere moment. Jean looked at Hermione beseechingly while Mark tightened his hold on the stem of his wine glass. “Hermione,” Mark began sternly

“Yes, Dad,” she answered dutifully.

“From the synopsis you gave me, what would be the most appropriate terminology here?” he enquired. To a casual observer, his tone might have seemed uninterested, but those at the table knew better.

Hermione balled up her napkin before turning to face her father. “Reuben was a Death Eater.”

“Is that so?”

Reuben was surprised by the cool tone of Mark’s voice, when he had met the man he wouldn't have thought him capable of such a malicious tone.

“One of the ones that wanted you dead?”

“Dad I…”

Reuben sat forward and squeezed Hermione’s leg, not allowing himself to react to the simple pleasure of feeling skin her before he cut in. This wasn’t her battle. “Mr Granger, I understand that you-”

“You need to leave, now,” Mr Granger stated.

Reuben found himself impressed, reluctantly, with Mark Granger. The man was a Muggle, one that knew he was in the face of a dark wizard and he had stood up to him anyway. Against Reuben’s wildest expectations the man had earned his respect.

“Mark maybe we should-” Jean began.

“Could I talk to you in the kitchen for a moment?” Hermione asked him, her voice devoid of emotion.

Standing after her, Reuben followed in silence until they walked through the kitchen door and he automatically locked and silenced the room.

“What are you doing here?” Hermione asked.

He took her in then, simple, white summer dress and hair all over the place. She looked fine, well even, he would have maybe considered his course of action was misguided, but he could detect the faintest glamour around her eyes which would indicate that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't as put together as she seemed.

Reuben stalked towards her, ignoring Hermione’s gasp as he placed both of his hands on her waist and lifted her off the floor gently setting her down on the edge of the kitchen table, before boxing her in, with his hands resting on the table on either side of her legs.

“What do you think I'm doing here? You didn't give me any choice, no chance to reply…. you just walked out,” he said with his face inches from hers.

Hermione’s eyes closed. “I was embarrassed,” she admitted.

“Of me?”

“No…”

“Could have fooled me little duck.”

As soon as the words fell out of his mouth, his affectionate expression for her that was as easy to give as breathing, Reuben saw hurt flash across her face.

“I… I couldn't afford to start liking you, you were clear about what you wanted, but I couldn't help it. I had to go, don’t you see I…”

Reuben grabbed the back of Hermione’s curls and crashed his face to hers, letting his blood be cooled by the soft sounds of contentment she made and the feel of the skin at the back of her neck under the pads of his fingers.

He broke away from her, his voice ragged with need. “Everyone knows now so maybe... Maybe we try it your way.”

Hermione looked at him, and her eyes were so hopefully he felt even worse. “Really?” she asked softly.

Reuben nodded.

“But what about…”

“Don’t make me repeat it!” he gruffed at her, “You have already had a lifetime's worth of concessions from me.”

Hermione nodded, but her eyes danced, and he fought, harder than he would generally have had too, to keep the smile off his face.

“Let's make some coffee. If we are going back out there it would be best to have something other than booze on the table,” he moved back as Hermione jumped off the table.

Hermione busied herself with a machine on the other side of the counter, it looked vaguely similar to one he had seen when she had taken him for a drink once before but smaller. When a sudden jet of steam erupted he jumped, he had managed to suppress most of his reaction, but she didn't miss it. He turned to see her shoulders shake as she attempted to stifle her laughter.

“Do you think that’s funny?” he growled in her ear, “Do you have any idea how old I am, Hermione? Sudden shocks like that could be fatal.”

She smiled at him. “More shocking than if I told you I wasn’t wearing underwear?” she replied innocently.

He groaned, and she laughed out loud then.

“Come on,” he said taking the tray from out of her hands and walking towards the door. He waited until they were nearly at the dining room before he reached for her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers and pulling her close. “Let me handle this,” he commanded, as gently as he could.

“Okay,” she agreed with an air of reluctance.

He disentangled his hand from hers before running it up her leg, just enough to confirm her words from earlier, when she squeaked slightly he closed his eyes, he would need to remember that sensation to get through the next thirty minutes.


	5. SIDE A: TRACK 5 Take Me To Church

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Written as part of the Femslash celebration on Tumblr. This one was for Pansmione week.

**SIDE A - TRACK 5**

[Pansy Parkinson x Hermione Granger]

_My lover's got humour_   
_She's the giggle at a funeral_   
_Knows everybody's disapproval  
I should've worshipped her sooner_

Take Me To Church / Hozier [2013]

* * *

 

Pansy fought her way to the front of the green tie clad students as they were _finally_ released from the dungeons. Though they had called them home for seven years, there had been no comfort to be had while they had been trapped down there as the battle raged on above them. But when they were allowed to take in the devastation that had ravaged their school, it was not much better. No one would tell them anything. No one would even speak to them. As if it was all their fault.

Every look was tinged with scorn and none more so than those directed at her. Pansy was too scared to care.

The moment Pansy saw Draco she broke into a run that her mother would have called ‘an offensive display’, she didn’t care about that either. But she did, she always had.

An hour later, everything was beginning to sink in, Voldemort was dead, Vince was dead, the Carrows were gone, and Pansy was the girl that had tried to sell out Harry Potter. She laughed without mirth when she realised that for once Draco wasn’t the first person people would think of as the junior face of intolerance, it would be her.

Pansy sat with her friends in a tired clump, resting amongst each other on the shadowed side of the Great Hall, waiting for their parents, the ones that weren't being arrested, to come and collect them. None of them spoke while they watched the jubilation on the other side of the space. It was the light side of the hall in every way and so far out of their reach.

Pansy occupied her time by making cruel observations about the celebratory Order members; the Weasley’s poverty, Potter’s bumbling good-guy act and finally her eyes fell on Hermione; _Perfect, Prefect, Princess Granger_.

It took a long time of staring before Pansy noticed that _she,_ at least, wasn't celebrating. Pansy watched as people approached Granger, clearly wanting to spend five minutes with a _war hero_. They went to Potter first and then Weasley, then on to Granger to complete the set. It was predictable, sycophantic and pathetic.

Pansy observed Granger’s cold eyes, and she _knew_ then, knew as clearly as she had ever known anything, that Hermione didn’t want it, not the attention, not the praise, none of it. Maybe she never had. And that small revelation led to so much more.

* * *

As Hermione apparated to the small graveyard, she took a moment to fortify herself before moving to stand under a large tree, many feet away from where the understated service was taking place. Hermione itched at the scratchy black fabric clinging to her wrist, she wasn’t one for formal robes, but it had seemed appropriate the respectful choice. Hermione was sure wearing something Muggle, as would have been her preference, would have been seen as a silent challenge.

Unfortunately, Hermione realised belatedly, that from a distance she couldn’t ascertain when the proceedings were over, it meant she lingered too long. As white blond hair flew towards her in a rage, she knew it was too late to make her planned exit, and she would have to weather the oncoming storm as best she could.

“What’s your game, Granger?” Malfoy sneered, and he was _much_ too close, his eyes red-rimmed. Whatever Hermione may have thought of him he had cared more for his friend than any of them had given him credit for.

“I didn’t come here for you,” the harsh words fell out more from the force of habit than deliberate censure.

Blaise turned and tiredly rubbed a hand across his face. “Come on, Draco, this isn’t worth it.” Then he walked passed Hermione, knocking into her shoulder as he did so.

Soon it was just herself and Parkinson left, and the enemy of her youth stared at her unblinkingly. Hermione forced herself to meet that emotionless gaze.

“Where are your little Order mates now?” she asked spitefully.

“I don't know. I don't consult them on everything I do,” Hermione replied with equal hostility before swiftly leaving, heading to somewhere she could apparate from. She cursed the tears that fell down her face; she hadn't meant to upset them.

* * *

Pansy want even surprised when Granger turned up at her flat, exactly a week after Vince’s funeral. She might not have known Granger as well as she thought, but she knew enough to be aware of her stubbornness. Granger had never been one to let anything go.

“What are you doing here?” Pansy asked in her affected bored tone, staring absently down at her perfectly manicured fingernails while resting her hip on the door jam.

“I….I honestly,” Granger stuttered before swallowing audibly. “I don't really know.”

Pansy sighed _well_ _that makes two of us._

She stepped back abruptly and ushered the other girl in before walking around the small, but perfectly decorated flat quickly shouting directions as she did so. “Bathroom is there... The study is through there… I am reliably informed that this is the kitchen, but you would have to take Theo’s word for it. I don’t cook.”

“Why are you taking me on a tour?” Granger asked incredulously.

“Well, I expect you will need to know, where everything is… if you anticipate coming over again.”

Pansy knew she had articulated the words with perfect disinterest; she just hoped the erratic beat of her heart wasn't quite as loud as she thought it was.

* * *

From that day they steadily got used to each other, a friendship formed almost in spite of them. If Hermione had given any credence to Divination, or any magic of the like, she would have considered that they were being pulled together by higher forces.

When Hermione got her new job she immediately raced to owl Pansy. It was the first notice she sent to any of her friends. She received a response an hour later. The owl carried missive was terse almost to the point of being scathing. Pansy’s loping, formal script lamented how boring the position Hermione had gone for was, and how utterly pathetic it was to be that excited about anything. However, when a new quill, _an expensive new quill_ , arrived on her first day with no note, Hermione’s face broke into a wide beam. What was it the girl was always saying? Oh, that was it, _words are cheap._

* * *

When Pansy invited Hermione out to drink with her friends she didn't think it was a sign of letting the girl further into her life. Rather, she told herself she was _testing_ the curly-haired witch, aggressively pushing her buttons so Hermione would leave and then Pansy would be free of her irritating presence.

Her friends were not exactly welcoming but not exactly hostile either, in fact, they all seemed to be watching Pansy more closely than they were Granger. Once Hermione had a glass of wine down her neck she responded to the thinly veiled barbs from Draco and Theo in kind. But it was Blaise that Pansy was concerned with.

Blaise sat _too close_ to Hermione and seemed always to be finding some reason to touch; her arm, her thigh and even thick strands of her hair. Granger didn't seem to be actively encouraging it, but she wasn't putting a stop to it either. After two hours and too many drinks to further bite back her anger, Pansy stood, abruptly grasping Hermione by the wrist. “Come on, Granger, time to go. You have work tomorrow.”

She was gratified when Hermione smiled, albeit rather wonkily at her before grabbing her bag and standing. When Blaise made to make a comment Pansy shot him down with a fierce glare before all but dragging Hermione from the pub.

She raced down the road unaware of how Hermione was struggling to keep up until the girl tugged her on her arm. “Slowdown will you, I can never keep up when you're on a mission in your heels… plus your legs are longer than mine,” Hermione panted out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, would you rather be back with Blaise, staring into his eyes while he runs his hands through your hair?” Pansy snapped. Hermione blinked at her twice. Her movements were heavy and laboured, and Pansy felt her anger evaporate as she realised just how much Granger must have had to drink. “Ignore me I…”

“What if I don’t want to ignore you?” Hermione said primly, the image somewhat ruined as it took her three attempts to place her hands on her hips successfully. She may have continued, but she was interrupted by a hiccup which was seemingly very funny as she broke into uncontrollable giggles before landing her forehead heavily on Pansy’s shoulder.

“You’re drunk,” Pansy stated plainly, though she moved a hand to grip Hermione’s waist. _To steady her, just to keep her steady._

“Maybe... but you're jealous,” Hermione retorted, her voice muffled as she spoke into Pansy’s collarbone.

“What?”

“You are,” Hermione stated as if she would have no refusal.

“I am not, of all the stupid things to say, Granger…” Pansy sputtered.

Hermione hiccupped again which was followed by another burst of laughter. “Silly billy,” she cooed into Pansy’s neck, “ _You_ could touch my hair if you wanted too.”

Pansy swallowed, and unconsciously her hand on the girl’s hip gripped tighter. “Could I?” she forced out past the lump in her throat.

Hermione’s head snapped up. “Of course,” she answered brightly before pressing a soft, all too quick kiss to her lips and making a loud smacking sound. “Come on, Pansy Pans,” she singsonged while dragging her arm, “it's home time, and as you so astutely pointed out… I have work tomorrow.”

Pansy almost managed to hide her smile. That girl, maybe _her girl_ , was going to have one sore head tomorrow.

* * *

Three months, Hermione thought to herself while she stirred the tea, taking as long as possible to complete the simple process. From that drunken night, she and Pansy had been seeing each other. It had been tentative at first, Pansy had no experience with girls and Hermione had no experience whatsoever.

She had been putting off talking to her friends about Pansy. Hermione knew it would be hard work convincing them of who the girl really was. At the same time, she was increasingly aware that the raven-haired witch, though she tried to act different, thought she was hiding their relationship as she was embarrassed or ashamed of her.

Nothing could have been further from the truth; Hermione cared about Pansy an awful lot. But the girl wasn't as hard as she seemed and Hermione knew her friends, she didn't want cruel barbs lobbed at her. But Ron found out, somehow, and now he was at her flat.

* * *

Pansy came down the decidedly inelegant stairs in Granger’s flat, pushing her hair behind her ears. She had been sleeping over for a while, sharing a bed but taking it slow, she wasn't sure if it was a justifiable caution or just fear that was stopping them from telling each other how they felt.

As she got to the bottom of the flight she overheard voices in the kitchen. Loud voices. As she registered Ron Weasley’s bad-tempered yelling, Pansy moved into the shadows, having no desire for him to see her in an emerald green camisole. Though, she couldn't help listening in.

Pansy felt her shell harden as she heard the words he labelled her; scum, Death Eater brat, vicious cow. Her spine stiffened and she was aware of words, coarse, harsh, direct, barbs forming in her throat. It was a natural reaction to her. Hate didn't deflect off her skin like people thought, it definitely permeated, but anytime someone tried to hurt her Pansy would launch something back at them with twice the force. If only for them not to realise how affected she had been.

Pansy’s skin felt heated as she fought back tears, she wasn't sure when she had last cried. She desperately wanted to see Hermione’s face, to see how she was reacting to the Weasel’s staunch attack… and then she didn't need to see it.

Pansy heard Hermione’s voice, her tone so sharp it could have cut glass. She listened as Hermione defended her, not by making excuses, not be explaining their relationship… she didn't do any of that. Instead, she seethed at Ron, for his audacity to question her choices, for his stupidity in labelling _her girlfriend_ words he didn't even understand and then finally when she wasn't sure she could hear any more the final blow was delivered.

“I’m not asking you to _like it_ Ron, but as my friend, I am _warning you_ ...don’t push me to choose, _you won’t win._ ”

The door slammed moments after that, hard. When Pansy made it into the kitchen Hermione’s face was ashen, and she was still panting, her wild curls tumbled everywhere as she tried to look down to hide her tear-streaked face, but Pansy would have none of that. Overcome she stepped forward, walking towards her girlfriend and linking her fingers through hers. “Upstairs,” she commanded softly, pulling Hermione back up the small staircase from which she had just descended.

Pansy led them back into their bedroom and as gently as she could, given her warring emotions, pushed Hermione to lay back on the bed. She moved to stand at the end of the double bed and gripped the bottom of Hermione’s red and blue plaid pyjama bottoms. Pansy pulled them slowly down her legs, smirking as Hermione lifted her hips to aid her intended movement. She darted towards the lightly tanned flesh, climbing forward onto the end of the bed laying kisses from her ankles up to her knees first on her left them up her right.

Sitting back on her haunches Pansy gripped Hermione’s hands, pulling her to sit upright, kissing her soundly, hands fisting in her hair before softly trailing her fingers over her cheeks, neck, shoulders, ghosting fingers down her side then grasping the bottom of the top and she grinned against Hermione’s mouth as her girl automatically lifted her hands over her head.

Pansy released a breathy moan as it became clear Hermione hadn't bothered with a bra, and she pushed her back down, flat on her back, kissing from her collarbone down before latching her mouth around a firm nipple.

“Do you know what you do to me, Hermione?” she whispered against pink flesh, before blowing cool air over the damp skin, “when I hear you defend me like that?”

“Too... many clothes,” Hermione breathed out raggedly.

Pansy sat back again, waiting for Hermione’s eyes to link with her's before she, slowly, inched the silky cami over her thighs, revealing her torso then yanked it clean over her head. She watched Hermione’s eyes widen before she couldn’t hold back anymore, and dropping down Pansy pushed Hermione’s legs further apart before connecting her mouth on her heated flesh, moving her tongue between her folds while the tip of her nose gently prodded against her clit.

Hermione’s soft moans and twitches made her own core tighten almost painfully. When she felt her girl’s body still she attached her mouth firmly to her clit, sucking rhythmically against it until her little lion came with a scream that chased away what had remained of Pansy’s nerves.

She had only just raised her head when Hermione pulled her roughly upwards and towards her, hugging her as if she didn't need to breathe. The emotions of the day threatened to take over as Pansy fought back the tears until Hermione kissed her tenderly.

There was heat there, but it wasn't quite the same. Pansy love was underpinned by fierce possession and fire when she felt Hermione’s love it was like being cradled in a protective blanket.

Hermione shifted them, so they were lying side by side, Pansy still wrapped in her arms, as she continued to pepper Pansy’s face with long kisses Hermione slid her fingers slowly down the raven-haired witch’s body. She teased Pansy gently before slowly inserting two fingers into her; she loosened her hold but fixed her eyes on Pansy’s while she worked her with increasing fever until Pansy broke in front of her.

Once their breathing had stilled, they moved apart slowly both lying side by side on their backs. Pansy pulled the covers over them thinking that sleep would not be out of the question.

The room was quiet for a long time until Pansy looked at the ceiling pulling absentmindedly on Hermione’s curls. “How do I marry you? Like the Muggles do,” she asked quietly.

“You take me to a church,” her girl replied, tucking herself closer into her side.

_A church, I could do that._


	6. SIDE A: TRACK 3 Umbrella

**SIDE A - TRACK 6**

[Hermione Granger x Fleur Delacour]

_When the sun shines, we'll shine together_   
_Told you I'd be here forever_   
_Said I'll always be a friend  
Took an oath I'm a stick it out 'til the end_

Umbrella / Rihanna [2007]

* * *

Fleur stared at the girl, prostrate and broken in the little bed of the smallest bedroom in the cottage and fought to keep her hands steady. Eventually, she moved to rest them on her bouncing knees. She hoped it would be enough to remind herself not to reach forward and touch.

Bill appeared in the doorway, sweet, kind, _dependable Bill_. Sometimes Fleur wished they could have learned to love each other fully, but after their initial flush of _something_ had faded away, they fell into a relationship that was more like a friendship than anything else, helped along, no doubt, by Molly Weasley’s colossal dislike of her. Not that Fleur cared, at least not any longer.

Fleur had put that feeling of perpetual unease in the matriarch's presence behind her years ago, thanks in no small part to the curly-haired witch occupying the room.  

-///-

Fleur had been visiting the Burrow at the end of Ron’s fifth year. Things in the house had been tense. Bill was apologetic, but as he had long since decided that the best way of dealing with his mother was avoidance, no real support was forthcoming. Fleur couldn't blame him, her preferred method of tackling issues straight on certainly wasn't bearing any fruit.

Fleur had been becoming increasingly aware that things weren't right. She had a sticky sense of anxiety, that once she acknowledged never went away. For a while, Fleur had thought that Bill wasn't the right man, but she would always argue with herself that it was just nerves talking and that Bill was perfect, _apart from his family_.

When Fleur had first heard that Hermione Granger would be joining her friends for the last few weeks of summer, she had inwardly sighed. Her Veela part did not enjoy the idea of another female being part of the group, women tended to be cruel, and as a consequence Fleur was aloof. But it was the human part of her, the much more dominant part, that was much more apprehensive. Fleur did not relish the idea of another girl joining the line of whispering voices. She took no pleasure in the thought of more mean spirited comments. Though, as she had learnt from the beginning of her visit, she kept her own counsel.

But Hermione was very different from the girl Fleur remembered, or rather, this girl wasn't who the others said she was. To Fleur, Hermione became a _very_ welcome addition to the party at the Weasley home. Fresh from a trip with her parents, Hermione arrived full of joy and stories. Fleur soon realised that the girl had no more of a ready ear in the house than she did, despite supposedly being closet so many of the occupants. Fleur quietly observed as Hermione would repeatedly begin to speak about the ruins she had seen or the book she had discovered only to be neglected. Fleur watched the girl's face drop as another pair of eyes shuttered over.

Fleur saw it most particularly in the young witch’s dealings with Ron, the youngest of the boys. Each of Hermione’s advances, awkward and fumbling as they were, were thoughtlessly spurned.

So Fleur sought to engage her, to ask Hermione about _herself_. She was trying to complete her training at Gringotts, and Fleur found she was immensely interested in the insights that Hermione had to offer but more than that… more than the book learning, and academic enthusiasm she discovered that Hermione Granger was kind. _Honestly kind_ … a personality trait far rarer than sparkling wit or brilliance, despite the fact she had those too.

Fleur didn’t like Hermione’s sensible shoes or her ridiculous hair, well not at first, after a while she found it slightly endearing. But she loved the kindness… _the kindness was new_.

As it turned out, Hermione spoke French, something that gave Fleur a great sense of comfort. English was still new to her, and so many of the phrases spoken in the house meant nothing, even with what she had managed to learn so far. Hermione would explain, patiently, even when Fleur still didn't understand after the third or fourth attempt.

Weirdly she felt protected by the younger girl, in a house full of people who either sneered or leered at her, albeit discreetly, that one kind face became necessary… they became friends.

-///-

Hermione groaned softly, and fitfully twisted in the bed. Fleur rocked forward without thought, checking the compress on her head and making sure the bandages around her arm were fixed appropriately.

“She's going to be fine,” Bill spoke from the doorway, reminding her of his presence. “You need to get some rest. You haven't left her bedside since the boys brought her back,” he tried for a firm tone.

“I can’t,” Fleur replied faintly, mournfully, “not until she wakes up at least.”

Bill sighed and stepped forward into the room to wrap Fleur into a hug. “You have to tell her when she wakes up. You know that don’t you?”

Fleur nodded against his chest, unable to find the words. Whatever the fate’s reason for introducing her to Bill Weasley, whatever the damage their failed relationship had done to their respective hearts, it was worth it for the relationship they had now; it was worth it for her best friend.

She lived in a home she loved by the sea. Bill had asked her to move in and help cover the costs. While she was still working in Gringotts, she hadn't seen the point in going back home. Fleur had always planned to return to France, had promised her parents she would, but she couldn't, not after the events at the Department of Mysteries.

That was the first time she had monitored _her_ bedside.

-///-

Fleur was sat in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing attempting to block out Harry’s anguished cries and Ron’s scrambled gibbering. No noise was coming from Hermione’s bed, she laid silent and incredibly, unnaturally still. Minerva, who had been over earlier, had said, sorrowfully, that it reminded her of when the little witch had been petrified.

All the others were running around like headless chickens, the knowledge that Voldemort was back, now that the wizarding world accepted it, meant plans had to be made, everything needed to move forward. No one seemed to be disturbed by the young girl that had taken a near-fatal curse to the chest, a young girl that had thrown herself in danger's path again to protect her friends.

Madam Pomfrey had done all she could, and so Fleur sat reading aloud from her Gringotts text, the only thing she had to hand, and silently willed Hermione to wake up. 

Fleur decided then and there that she would stay in Britain, and see this war out. The girl that had given her comfort when she needed had given it without being asked; she would have it returned if she wanted.

-///-

Fleur had never actually given her strange attachment to Hermione much thought, it had just seemed… _right._ But more answers than she may have even wanted burst forth as the trio popped up on the beach. Their sudden arrival forever broke the magic of their quiet, idyllic vista.

It should have been the _sight_ of the pale and limp Hermione wedged between the two boys that caught her first.

But it wasn't.

It was _her smell_ or more specifically… the scent of her blood.

_Mate._

Fleur’s Veela side was heavily diluted, but even so, it was robust enough to identify her partner if she should ever meet a _true_ match. Her Grandmother had told her that she would feel a strong bond with that person, would want to move heaven and earth to protect them… that their blood would sing to her, but the sight of it spilt would likely bring on white-hot rage.

Fleur had sprung into action, banning anyone from the room after they had deposited Hermione in the nicest bed. She had tended to Hermione, _her mate_ , tenderly as if her small limbs were made of spun glass. Fleur positioned her too slim frame into the bed and cleaned her with gentle care, softly removing the glass from her hair piece by piece.

She hadn't even realised she was crying until fat wet drops appeared on Hermione’s bandages.

She sat in the chair then and waited.

Bill had picked it up quickly of course, as well as being incredibly intelligent and knowing her well, and he had enough ‘other’ drifting through his own blood to pick up on these things by instinct.

-///-

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked softly.

“Just keep them from touching her, I’m not sure how I will react,” Fleur asked desperately burying her face in her hands.

“Done,” he answered resolutely, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

-///-

Hermione stirred in the bed again, and Fleur jumped from Bill’s embrace to loom over her as she slowly blinked her eyes open. The prone girl began furiously gasping for air, and Fleur raced to reassure her panic. “You are safe Hermione. You are at Shell Cottage.”

“The boys?” she croaked.

“They are fine,” Fleur soothed.

Hermione exhaled a deep breath and nodded.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” Fleur asked gently, moving an escaped curl from Hermione’s face.

The injured witch’s face twisted, and she shut her eyes tightly. “Would you… please…. Stay with me?” she stuttered out. “I don’t want to be… I _can't_ be alone.”

Fleur leant forward to grasp her hand. “You will never be alone Hermione, I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: One day I really want to get around to extending this one.


	7. SIDE A: TRACK 7 True Colours

**SIDE A - TRACK 7**

[Lavender Brown x Parvati Patil]

_Show me a smile then_   
_Don't be unhappy, can't remember  
When I last saw you laughing_

True Colours / Cyndi Lauper [1986]

* * *

Lavender trudged up the winding stairs from the common room to the fourth year girls dorm, gripping the frothy skirts of her gown and counting down the last remaining seconds until she could take off her too high shoes and wash the evening off her face.

She had been _so excited_ about the Yule Ball; everything was going to be so perfect. She had spent _a month_ researching the best hairstyle to offset her figure-enhancing, sky blue frock and when the evening had finally come she and Parvati had pulled it off with meticulous precision. Her soft blonde hair had been twisted and curled with the top section pulled off her face exposing her baby blue eyes and rouged cheeks. The rest of her light waves had tumbled down her back, past the off-the-shoulder neckline of her perfect dress.

Lavender had been asked to go by Seamus Finnigan. She liked Seamus, _not in that way_ , but no one else had asked, and it was better than the prospect of going on her own. Harry had asked Parvati, and as scruffy as he may have been, at least he was a TriWizard Champion.

It was going to be brilliant.

Herself and her best friend had spent almost all of their last week of lessons passing notes — their jagged penmanship exposing their excitement as much as every overture they uttered. Their evenings were spent side by side, and each whisper had been a more elaborate dream scenario of what would happen. Lavender had laughed until she could barely breathe. They shared hopes of fairytale dances, soft words and heated glances. They spoke of passionate clinches and determined kisses.

_It was going to be brilliant._

And then it wasn't.

Not long after arriving, Seamus had gone off to find Dean and had all but abandoned her. Lavender had managed a few awkward dances with her classmates but most of the evening was spent observing _other people_ having the time of their lives. Her feet hurt, her hair was pulled so tight she was getting a headache, and the punch was so sweet it almost made her retch… she was _done_.

Lavender pushed her bedroom door open and was surprised to find that someone else had already had the right idea. Parvati was lying flat on her back, with her bare feet resting on the headboard of her bed as she stared blankly at the ceiling.

“Good night?” Lavender called as she deposited her shoes on the ground before collapsing next to her best friend on the bed, squished shoulder to shoulder on the small mattress.

“I’ve had better,” Parvati answered dryly, and both girls giggled, letting the stresses of the event wash away.

Parvati told her all about Harry, his unwillingness to dance and his lack of ability while they were up there, Lavender filled her in on Seamus.

“We should have just gone together,” Parvati finished with a slight wariness in her eyes.

Lavender rolled to rest her head on the other girl’s shoulder. “Next time,” she agreed. She meant it; her mind was suddenly filled with a fast play imagining of how much better the evening would have been if they had gone together.

“Do you think anyone had a good time?” Parvati asked lightly, her fingers grazing over the top of Lavender’s bare shoulders.

“Hermione,” she replied, with bitterness in her tone. “She was with Viktor Krum, of all people, he was twirling her around like a delicate ballerina, fetching her drinks and showing her off to his friends.”

“No. I saw her leave in tears,” Parvati revealed, and Lavender sat up on one arm, leaning over her friend, one eyebrow raised in query. “Something Ron said,” Parvati qualified.

“Figures,” she muttered as she flounced back onto her back her eyes tracking the peeling paint from the old ceiling.

The bed suddenly shifted so abruptly Lavender was nearly dislodged from the mattress. “Hey,” she grumbled but didn't have time to continue as a slim arm entered her line of vision and she traced the limb up to Parvati’s smiling but determined face.

“Get up,” she commanded.

“Why?” Lavender whined.

Parvati signed. “Because this was a ball, this was _our night,_ and I refuse to let it end without a single good dance.”

“I’m not going back down there; I would rather die than put those shoes back on,” she rattled out dramatically, pointing to the offending footwear as if identifying the culprit for a heinous crime.

“I didn’t say anything about going downstairs did I?” Parvati smiled wickedly, and Lavender giggled, forcing herself to her feet and moving to stand in the middle of the room.

“There’s no music,” she said clumsily.

“Oh, please! Excuse me for not setting the scene,” Parvati huffed before grabbing Lavender’s wrists and placing her hands on her slim shoulder before moving her hands to Lavender’s waist. As she began twirling the blonde erratically, she hummed out a melody that Lavender couldn't quite place, and then the lack of proper music didn't seem to matter.

Somehow as the dancing continued the twirling closed in, their movements became slower, and Parvati finished her off-key humming. Weary from the evening, Lavender rested her head on her friend's shoulder and felt Parvati’s head lean against hers in turn. Her fingers moved delicately over the jewelled bodice of the other girl’s gown; it was the dress that she had so admired when she first saw it. Not because she wanted it for herself but because it made Parvati look radiant.

“You looked beautiful tonight,” Parvati whispered, “just in case no one else told you.”

“I know,” Lavender replied, and both girls giggled, “you too.”


	8. SIDE A: TRACK 8 All Of Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: For the lovely guest reviewer that wanted to see some Hermione x Oliver Wood, specifically mentioning how beautiful Oliver finds her. I hope this has come somewhere close to what you imagined.

**SIDE A - TRACK 8**

[Hermione Granger x Oliver Wood]

_What would I do without your smart mouth?_   
_Drawing me in, and you kicking me out_   
_You've got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down_   
_What's going on in that beautiful mind_   
_I'm on your magical mystery ride  
And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be alright_

John Legend - All of Me / John Legend [2013]

* * *

Oliver woke suddenly, forcibly yanked from the peaceful dream world he had been inhabiting. He looked around for a moment, confusion gripping his overtired mind until he felt a shift in the bed. He hadn't been sleeping well, and his eyes felt heavy and unresponsive as he attempted to blink away the lingering sleep to make out more than blurred shapes in the room.

Oliver stretched out to the other side of the bed and felt a cool breeze on his arm indicating the cover had been lifted.

“Hermione,” he grunted, and found his voice was just as unresponsive as his eyes. “Love, it’s early, _please_ get back into bed.”

Oliver heard the soft pads of her feet as she walked around the room before he could sense her hovering over him. He opened his eyes just as she dropped her soft lips against his forehead.

“Stay in bed,” she implored.

“Hermione,” he pleaded, lifting his arm again, wanting to touch her, to persuade her to stay.

“I’m fine,” she responded tightly, brushing away his needy fingers. Her brittle tone made him wince. She was not fine, not even slightly. Neither of them were.

* * *

Oliver loved lazy mornings, coffee and Quidditch, and somehow Hermione Granger had come into his life and made herself the top of that rigid list, a list that hadn’t changed since he was fourteen, and the ridiculous thing was she had done it without even trying.

They had met again, properly, he supposed he should say, at a party, Ginny Potter held to honour the recent success of her team. It was a party that Oliver had only reluctantly agreed to attend.

It wasn't that Oliver didn't like gatherings, but there were always too many people, all of whom seemed to be determined to have fun at any cost. The room was stuffed with vague acquaintances he had been around for too many years. _How many times could you meet the same almost friends and tell the same stories?_

It appeared Hermione’s feelings on the inforced revelry were the same.

As the only people in the room not engaged in some form of heavy petting, though Blaise Zabini and Luna Lovegood had moved onto what could more aptly be described as furious rubbing, Oliver and Hermione got into a conversation which quickly became a debate.

Hermione was passionate, opinionated, quick to anger and downright infuriating with stubbornly held beliefs, all of which Oliver told her, right to her enraged face. She was working at the Ministry in some research role he had never heard of, working on things that made his head hurt to contemplate. Hermione had been drifting through some tangent that had led to her expressing her opinion that Hogwarts allocated a _disproportionate_ amount of time to _Quidditch and Quidditch related things, that had no place in the education system_.

Oliver still remembered that sentence verbatim; he was sure no one else would have had the gall to so resolutely pick at his choice of profession so unapologetically. It took him a long while to realise Hermione wasn’t deliberately trying to be a bitch; she just really believed what she was saying. Oliver couldn't remember those words without hearing them in the shrill voice she had used, it that had irked him almost as much as the stupid words leaving her mouth. It was that night he learnt that Hermione didn't care for imitation or, more specifically, the especially decidedly unflattering impression at the top of his voice.

The conversation - or by this point dispute - felt like it would never end and despite his mind whispering to him that the lass was as immovable as rocks, Oliver couldn't help himself. He wanted to continue to prod her. Hermione was just so _bloody responsive_ ; her eyes flashed and her cheeks pinked, and if he managed to get her really mad her hair would actually spark.

Ever the sportsman, Oliver began awarding himself points for every little tick she displayed, and by the time he had reached three figures, he was distantly aware he had moved closer to Hermione, boxing her towards the back door, dominating her attention.

When the party began to fade around them, Oliver decided to circumvent the ‘goodbyes’ that were no doubt imminent by grabbing a bottle of wine off the counter and steering Hermione towards the floo back to his place. The curly-haired witch didn't even notice that they had shifted location as she was still passionately lecturing him about being an elitist as he had 'the audacity' to have house elves at his family home. When she realised it, Hermione raged at him for his presumption in taking her back without her consent. Oliver contested that he couldn’t be expected to point out to a grown woman that she had walked through a fireplace and somehow hadn’t noticed.

At some point, Hermione ran out of steam, long after the first bottle Oliver had pinched was sunk. While their verbal argument petered out, they continued fighting for dominance, mainly on his hallway floor, though he eventually moved them to the downstairs sofa. Neither could have been declared the winner, though technically speaking Hermione did end up on top.

* * *

That first night had been three years ago now, and looking back it was inevitable how they ended up. Hermione challenged him in a way Oliver had never experienced before. She was just _so_ different.

She loved him too; it had taken her longer to admit it; her heart was more bruised than his. Oliver was not particularly adept at romance, he had experienced his fair share of dalliances, but no meaningful encounters. Whereas Hermione had endured the harsh realities of a couple of serious relationships falling apart. Most damaging had been the end of her relationship with Ron, and it hadn't been a clean break. There had been sharp words and accusations from both the boy and his disappointed family, arguments that still haunted her now.

Oliver fell in Hermione’s orbit because of her fire, her spitting rage and passion. Unexpectedly, it wasn’t her explosiveness that affected his heart; he fell in love with the vulnerability she had hidden beneath her hard exterior, something she only allowed the people very close to her to see.

-//-//-//-

_Hermione was sat at Oliver’s kitchen table; they had been ‘seeing’ each other for a few months though neither was particularly keen to put a label on what they were, they just wanted to enjoy each other’s company. Much to the immense irritation of their friends, not that either of them cared._

_A slight huff caught his attention from his place near the fridge, and he edged over to Hermione to look over her shoulder. There on the so-called ‘society pages’ of The Daily Prophet was an article about them. His eyes were drawn to the picture, a candid shot of them walking through the leafy park near her flat taken just the week before. Their gloved hands were linked, and they wore matching relaxed expressions. It was a while before Oliver tore his eyes away and caught the subheading: ‘Quidditch Heartthrob dating The Ministries’ Plain Jane’._

_“Hermione,” he began, resting his hands on her shoulders._

_She turned the page violently, ripping the parchment as it turned over. “Mindless drivel,” she spat with an air of indifference that might have fooled most people, but not him. Words aside, Hermione had never been able to hide how she felt from her face, not that Oliver could see more than a pinched frown, she wouldn't meet his gaze. Whatever she was saying, she felt hurt._

_“Do you know how beautiful I think you are?” Oliver asked softly, moving to sit in the chair beside her and delicately tucking some of her hair behind her ear._

_Hermione scoffed. “I know,” she replied lightly, and Oliver shook his head at her noticeable deflection. Whenever he complimented her appearance she would affirm his comment, but he could tell it never went beyond the surface, it washed off her; she wouldn't say she didn't believe him, but it was as good as._

_“But I’m gobby, sarcastic and a little mean at times,” she continued, eyes dropping to her lap._

_“Yes you are,” Oliver agreed, and her face shifted into an adorable little pout._

_He sighed. “I leave my boots out in the hall, I get up from the table when we are eating to make game notes that have popped into my head, and I do not function if I haven't eaten meat for twenty-four hours-”_

_Hermione laughed at that, their try at a vegetarian curry night and his legendary mood afterwards was still relatively fresh in both their minds._

_Oliver reached forward to pull the paper out of her hands completely. “I’m not perfect, I don't expect you to be, but I… I love you… all of you,” he ran a calloused thumb over the apple of her cheek, and she looked up to meet his eyes. “Every rounded curve, and every jagged edge… you are magnificent, Hermione.”_

_Her breath hitched when the L word had fallen out of his mouth, the word that he hadn't even known how deeply he felt until that moment. As she drifted forward for their lips to connect Oliver knew Hermione was stalling, knew she was scared of saying it back and baring her heart again, but it didn't matter. When their slow kiss became watery, as tears slid unchecked from her eyes, Oliver knew she felt it back._

_-//-//-//-_

Oliver twisted under the covers as he heard the door to the bathroom pull shut, swiftly followed by a strong silencing spell voiding out any noise from the little room.

Hermione had been avoiding him like this for a week, and he felt a rare sense of unease in his stomach. Something was going on; that much was clear, but the fact that she wouldn't talk about it was killing him. They _always_ talked about their problems. Sometimes they were _too frank_ with each other, so direct that others in their circle would raise their eyebrows at their openness, but that was _their_ way, that was how _they_ did things. Sure, the honesty could sting, but they trusted each other implicitly.

The silence in the flat was so heavy it felt like a substantial weight pushing against Oliver’s shoulders during the day, and his chest at night. Knowing he would get no more sleep now, Oliver jumped from the bed, dragging on a pair of sweatpants and heading to the kitchen to get some coffee. He had no solid plan other than to stall Hermione on her way to work.

As he shuffled down the hall he stepped over one of his old Quidditch jerseys that Hermione now used, he hadn't worn that one for a while, that one was the only one she had not ‘effectively’ stolen, that one he had _given_ to her after the best night of his life.

-//-//-//-

_They had been dating for six months, not the longest time by some people’s standards, but longer than Oliver had ever managed before. As the biggest match of the season approached, Oliver prepared an incredibly long speech to persuade Hermione to come. The roll of parchment he had drafted cited various statistics that he had researched on the enjoyment of sport having a positive impact on overall happiness and productivity. Oliver had rehearsed several different versions of heartfelt declarations to help him explain how much it would mean to him for her to be there. In the end, he had needed none of it._

_Hermione had woken up early, as usual, on Sunday the week before the game and said, apropos of nothing, ‘what should I wear for the game next week?’ It had taken Oliver over a minute to respond, stunned by her turn around._

_Despite the wasted time in preparation, Oliver was glad of her deciding without his nagging. When he saw Hermione huddled in the stands, he knew she was there because she wanted to be, and Hermione hated everything about Quidditch, so he knew she was there for him._

_Everything was great until he took a bludger to the face._

_The blow knocked him straight off his broom, and he came to in the sterile white confines of the medical tent. Oliver had been coaxed to sit on the edge of the cot by a Mediwitch who went off to get a stronger pain relief potion when Hermione ran in. Her face was sickly pale, and her eyes looked too large on her face._

_“Oliver,” she croaked, rushing forward to run her eyes over him. “Oh thank god, I was so scared,” she finished as she carded her fingers gently through his hair._

_“I’m ok, love, it just fucking hurt.” The healer had fixed his nose, but there would be bruising for a while._

_“Language,” she chastised with none of her usual heat and Oliver smiled against her collarbone._

_“I wish I didn't have to come here and watch you play,” Hermione sighed exasperatedly._

_Oliver bristled at her attack, and her words angered him despite the soothing comfort of her hands. “You don’t have to come, I know you hate Quidditch,” he grumbled._

_Hermione backed away, and her eyes narrowed. “It's not that you stupid man… Do you have any idea how dangerous your perfect sport is? Tonight wasn't even that serious an accident, so I’m told,” she huffed. “From the stands it looked like you were dead, all that blood over your face then you hanging limply on the stretcher._

_I sit there in the freezing cold praying that you’re going to be okay the whole way through, and it's exhausting… Because… Because… Well, I don't know what I would do without you.”_

_Oliver watched Hermione with wide eyes as she shuffled and fixed her gaze on the tarpaulin opening behind his head._

_“You irritate me more than anyone I have ever met. You eat more than anyone on the planet, and I should know, I sat across the table from Ron Weasley for seven years, and yet you still stay slim. My flat is covered in your trainers to the point where I don't understand how you still have more pairs at your own place._

_When you get angry I have to concentrate ludicrously hard because your accent gets so thick I can barely understand a word you are saying but… I love you… I suppose... and… I would be grateful if you could you at least attempt to not die while you rest on a stick, hundreds of feet in the air.”_

_Hermione was flushed now, and it took Oliver a while to find his voice. He circled her wrist and pulled her forward till she was nestled between his thighs._

_“Insufferable, woman,” he huffed, his voice dripping in deliberate affection._

_“Was that the worst declaration of love ever?” Hermione asked self-consciously._

_“Probably,” Oliver laughed, “but I’ll take it, I’ll take it.”_

-//-//-//-

Oliver moved back to the bedroom, placing the mugs on his bedside table and stood in front of the bathroom door squaring his shoulders before raising his fist no less than three times before, finally, falteringly, knocking.

The silence was overwhelming for a minute before he sensed the silencing charm fall and the door clicked open. Feeling his heart in his feet, Oliver tried the door, pushing against it lightly till he could see her.

Hermione was sat on the floor, her legs drawn up against her chest and her head resting back on the side of the bath.

“Are you ok?” he asked dumbly, having no idea what he was walking into. When Hermione didn't respond, he lowered himself in front of her, hoping to get an explanation but also seeking to block her path in case she should decide to bolt. Despite her sporting reluctance, Hermione was surprisingly quick. As he drew level with her, Oliver noticed how clammy and pale she was.

“Are you sick?” he asked concerned.

Hermione’s eyes fluttered open, but they stayed fixed on the ceiling, “No... not sick just...”

Oliver leant forward to hold a hand to her head. “You feel really warm,” he muttered, his nerves ratcheting, Hermione _didn’t do sick_ . She’d had the worst flu he had ever seen about a year before and she tried to pretend like she was fine. It eventually became known as the _illness-that-should-not-be-named_ , much to her disgust.

“Oliver,” she interrupted weakly, her eyes drooping shut.

“I think you might have a temperature,” he continued pulling his hand away, he racked his brains to think of what potions they had in the house. _He could go to Grimmauld they would likely have more. The Potter’s kept a pretty full stock what with the kids running about_...

“Oliver.”

_But maybe potions wouldn't be enough, she looked ill, even if she wasn't admitting it. If it was sufficient to get her to sink to the floor it must have been bad, maybe he should try and take her straight to St. Mungo's, though he may have to stun her first..._

“OLIVER!” Hermione all but screeched, and Oliver’s inner panic came to a crashing halt.

“Sorry, what did you say, love?” he asked looking at her intently and trying to detect any other symptoms she wasn't confessing, that way he could give the doctor a full report.

She looked down. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

The silence of the room became reflected in his mind, and his head fell back against the wall behind him.

“… I know the season is about to start, and I'm due to present my latest thesis and…. we’re not married… I just, I don't know, I didn't know how to tell you,” her eyes filled with tears.

“You’re sure?” Oliver asked weakly, the forming of those words alone being a struggle.

“I’m sure,” she replied hoarsely before looking at him pleadingly. “Oliver, say something.”

His brain shifted into gear as he realised, with no small amount of horror, that she was afraid of his reaction. In quick movements, he lifted her off the cold tile floor and folded her into his lap. It was something they did, this position. If Hermione was going mad at him, flailing her arms about over a discarded sock or a missed dinner he would ball her up and secure her into his lap until she would laugh. It wasn't the same situation, but he hoped she understood the comfort and reassurance he was trying to convey.

“Do you think they’ll have your nose?” he asked into her hair, his voice hitching as he felt more than heard her choke out a half laugh, half sob.

“As long as they don’t have my hair we’ll be alright” she replied hesitantly.

“We’ll be alright Hermione, I promise.”

“Sure?”

“Sure,” he replied definitively. “As you tell me all the time lass, I’m right stubborn git when I get an idea in my head.”

Hermione laughed then, and some of the tension leaked out of her shoulders. Oliver sat there for ages, long after his legs started cramping; he could stretch later, he wouldn't have a chance to get this moment back. The moment he learnt he held his entire world in his lap.


	9. SIDE A: TRACK 9 Wish You Were Here

**SIDE A - TRACK 9**

Pictures of You Universe [Luna Lovegood x Rabastan Lestrange]

_How I wish, how I wish you were here._   
_We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year,_   
_Running over the same old ground._   
_What have we found?_   
_The same old fears.  
Wish you were here_

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd [1975]

* * *

Luna Lestrange stood beneath the stars and let her head fall back slowly. She breathed in a large pull of air before settling herself onto the damp grass. It wouldn't be the best idea to remain out there too long, what with the sky darkening above and the dew settling on the ground, but she thought a little while would be fine. She would have time enough to ask the questions she had of the universe; then she would go back inside to enjoy the revelry.

As the noises from the party wafted over to her, Luna laid back and let herself relax, taking comfort in the firm certainty of the earth beneath her body. Idly she placed both hands on her stomach as she searched the sky for familiar constellations.

Her mother had been the first to tell her about the stars, the tales of Gods and Monsters — stories of all-consuming love and utter devastation. Luna had been bewitched by them, and then later devasted when she found out that those tales that she had long ago committed to memory differed so significantly from the ones they learned in Astronomy.

The ‘official’ ones weren’t wholly removed from the epic sagas her mother had weaved, but Luna found them lacking in the inevitable comparison. It was much like the difference between a clear window and one made of multi-coloured stained glass, both let the light in, but, where one illuminated, the other let you bathe in a kaleidoscopic spectrum.

Maybe that was why they remained so clear in her mind, _even now_ , so many years since she had gone.

Her father had taken Luna out into the night after her mother had died, he would hold her on his lap on the grounds of their family home and gently pull his robe around them to hide her from the chill. Xenophilius attempted to tell his small daughter the same stories, he must have heard them often enough himself, but he could never quite manage it. Some detail would be forgotten, a word would be misplaced. Luna would remind him, and he would laugh, a little-broken sound that spoke of how much he was suffering. ‘That’s right’ he would concede quietly, ‘I’m not as good at this as she was’. Luna would fold herself around him, ‘different Daddy,’ she would say, ‘just different’.

Then there had been _him_.

Rabastan, who had swept into the dungeons at Malfoy Manor and coaxed her back to hope. Appearing as he was, a grim, dark spectre, only just holding the ravages of his aura together, and yet Luna never feared him. He intrigued her.

He came back, time after time, though she offered him little encouragement. Rabastan brought her food, warmth and much-needed affection. When Luna had said she missed the night sky he presented her with a book so she could see the stars, without ever asking _why_ she needed it for her comfort. The wizard had made the entire universe fit inside bound parchment pages as his first act of devotion, and every action that had followed had been as heartfelt. Whenever Rabastan came to her, he seemed to offer her another iteration of the whole world, and all he would ask was that it met with her approval.  

Luna wasn’t sure she could ever feel more than she felt for Rab, but she was proved wrong each new day, as sunlight drifted into their room and illuminated his dark face, Luna knew she loved him a little more. As time eased away the lingering haunted lines on his face, and the clawing nightmares that attacked him drifted to being further apart, she watched the shell of the man fill out. Luna proudly observed as Rabastan became the person he had promised to be, the person she had seen in him when he was gripped by madness, fury and grief.

Luna had achieved what her mother had wanted for her, despite her feeling as if it may never happen. She had a happy life, that orbited around a consuming love that occupied more than her heart, an emotion that permeated as deep as her bones, a passion that tendriled around her soul, and a companionship that was as vital as breathing.

Luna just wished her mother could be there to see it.

Luna questioned her decisions more than she would ever let on, having Perdy while still young had been a trial. Not that she didn't love her girl with everything she was, but Luna couldn’t help asking herself if she was doing all she could to correct the wrongs of the past.

Then there was Hermione. There wasn't a mother left in their group, but she and her best friend tried to make it up with each other. Hermione had been invaluable when she had Perdita, she had been at the birth and was a constant source of unfailing support, she never judged, never complained she was just _there_. For all of the curly-haired witch’s posturing about doing things _her_ way, she backed Luna and her decisions entirely.

Her time was coming soon; Hermione would welcome the birth of her own children in the weeks to come. Luna knew her friend would need her in the same way; Luna could see the all too familiar panic settle behind Hermione’s eyes as the time approached. She hoped she was strong enough to be of comfort.

The French doors slid open behind her, and heavy boots fell onto the stone path leading down to her resting place.

“Come on love you should be inside,” Rabastan called. “Severus just made a derogatory comment about country living, and Dolph has had just about enough Firewhisky to make the argument worthwhile.”

“Mmmm,” she replied noncommittally, her eyes still searching the heavens.

“What are you doing?” he asked, more quietly this time as he reached her, standing by her head.

“Looking at the stars.”

“Yes, love, I can see that.”

Rabastan sighed before sweeping her up as if she weighed no more than a bag of sugar and settling back on the ground with Luna in his lap.

“You shouldn't lay on the ground, it's wet, and you could get sick,” he mumbled as he ran his hands over her arms, his dancing fingers breathing heat into her chilled skin.

Luna hadn't understood his overprotective nature when they had first lived together; she had always been free of constraints and rules while growing up and Rabastan’s attention had occasionally felt smothering. Over time even her serene countenance broke with his increasing instance on layers, not leaving the Manor with wet hair and total fear of colds. It took a long time for all of the pieces to push together. Azkaban had cast a long shadow over all of them.

Luna leant into Rab as she looked back up at the stars. It was so peaceful with him. She didn't have to fill every silence or explain all of her words; he just understood, she supposed they all did now. Luna lived amongst a group who accepted her totally; even Yax would shout at people in the ‘real world’ if they made a face to indicate they hadn’t understood what she was saying. Severus found her hard work at times, but then he found kinship of any kind traumatic. The wizard had lived almost entirely by himself since childhood, and Severus faced the most significant adjustment to their new way of life. Luna found his lack of patience with her more humorous than intimidating, and if he ever went too far, Hermione intervened, fiercely. For a man that was so determined never supplicate to anyone again, Severus certainly fell over backwards to make Hermione happy.

“What did you want to ask?” Rabastan questioned, laying a gentle kiss against her shoulder.

His questions broke her out of her silent revery, and she turned in his grasp to face him with raised eyebrows, he smiled softly at her.

“Your Mum, you always end up stargazing when you have a question for her,” he said his eyes full of affection.

Luna sighed and leant back on him. “Whether I’m enough,” she admitted quietly.

“What do you mean? Of course, you're enough. How much _more_ could you be?”

“No, I mean…” Luna sighed, “I just wish she was here.”

Rabastan’s arm tightened around her, “I know.”

The quiet of the night drifted around them, and Luna thought about what to say to ease her husband’s mind, he was probably already questioning her contentment.

“It’s not that I’m unhappy, far from it,” she asserted gently, and she felt his form sag behind her. _All this time and he still worried_. Sometimes his doubt made her angry but not at him, at the world. Hermione had relayed the same enough times about Antonin, and so they adjusted, maybe they would all always need reassurance on some level.

“I… I wish she could see it sometimes, the life we have built, I wish I could see her hold Perdy, hear her tell me everything I’m doing is right.”

Rabastan kissed the side of her temple. “I wish my mother were here to… she would have loved you so much.”

“Really?”

“Yes, completely. Not as much as I love you of course,” Rabastan said with an edge of humour in his voice, that made her face split into a broad grin.

“I understand that it feels overwhelming at times,” he continued, “that you want her approval and for her to see how well you've done, we all want that… that validation. Everything was so _wrong_ for such a long time that it's natural to yearn for proof you are on the right track.”

Luna awkwardly turned in his lap to face him, meeting his concerned eyes with a soft look. “ _I know_ I'm on the right track,” she whispered as she nuzzled against his jaw.

Rabastan dropped a kiss into her hair, and they sat quietly under the stars, bathed in moonlight, wrapped in love and the surety of each other’s presence, listening to the sounds of their devoted family filter across the manicured garden.


	10. SIDE A: TRACK 10 Sitting, Waiting, Watching

**SIDE A - TRACK 10**

[Hermione Granger x Anthony Goldstein]

_Well I was sitting, waiting, wishing_   
_You believed in superstitions_   
_Then maybe you'd see the signs_   
_Lord knows that this world is cruel_   
_And I ain't the Lord no I'm just a fool  
And a loving somebody don't make them love you_

Sitting, Waiting, Watching / Jack Johnson [2005]

* * *

Anthony Goldstein grabbed the proffered styrofoam coffee cup with a jolt as he came back out of his daydream. He was reluctantly impressed that the barista, who had seemed to be paying no attention to his order, had gotten both his name and drink order correct. _Maybe that was a positive sign? Perhaps this afternoon would be lucky? It would be best not to overthink it._ Walking away from the counter, Anthony jostled the cup as he adjusted his scarf in preparation for once again facing the winter chill.

Turning abruptly he stilled as he collided into someone, someone who must have been stood almost directly behind him. His large hand automatically shot out to steady them, hoping to prevent them from falling to the floor. Anthony swiftly deposited his cup on a nearby flat surface, to make sure he didn't spill any of the burning hot contents on his latest victim. It wasn't an overreaction. He had done exactly that before.

Anthony shut his eyes for a second, and he allowed a moment of internal screaming, his mind was raging at him for being such a _blundering idiot._ Though his usual four verse scolding unexpectedly ended when he heard, “Anthony?” murmured in a familiar voice, an _incredibly_ familiar voice.

Anthony’s eyes snapped open, and he realised two things in quick succession. Firstly, that the reason he hadn't _seen_ the person when he had initially turned was because they were easily over a foot shorter than him, and secondly that the person was... “Hermione?” the name fell from his lips coated heavily in the extreme surprise he felt.

Hermione. _Hermione Granger_. Anthony could feel heat rising in his cheeks and was mortified that at the age of twenty-five he was still blushing like a child in front of her. Of course, the mortification only made his predicament worse. Pushing against the tidal wave of thoughts that had just crashed against his forehead he forced himself to speak.

“I am so... _terribly_ …. sorry,” he managed, and then winced when he noticed he still had her arm in his too firm grip. Anthony released it with a barely audible further apology and took a step back from her for good measure.

“No problem,” Hermione said softly, and she smiled, one of her warm, happy, genuine smiles, that made her face look as if it was opening up like the soft petals of a spring flower. “I wasn't watching where I was going either… we must make a right pair huh?” she said with a laugh.

Anthony was struck mute by her casual disregard for his clumsiness, so instead of answering her _like a normal human being_ he just about managed a nod. He just couldn't believe he was stood in front of her, Hermione Granger, in a random Muggle coffee shop of all places. _If you had known you would have worn something better_ , he chastised himself, but he quickly realised with relief that she couldn't see the tatty jumper he favoured for quiet days under his bulky, winter coat.

Hermione looked markedly different from the last time he had seen her, though that had been over two years ago, at one of the larger Hogwarts reunion shindigs. Anthony went every year but Hermione, it seemed, couldn't always make it. He often wondered where she was while he was at those things year after year, reciting the same stories and eating the same, dull, hors d'oeuvres. _Of out with some mysterious wizard, someone ridiculously attractive with a dynamic career and opinions on the best wine to have with certain delicacies. A wizard that never wore tatty jumpers or knocked into witches in coffee shops no doubt._ For some reason Anthony always imagined her on a yacht during those occasions, sipping champagne and laughing about someone's ill-informed opinions with her talented, beautiful friends.

Her hair was still the same as ever Anthony reflected with some amusement. He wondered if the men in Hermione's life thought it made her unique, captivating, or maybe they believed it hid some of her natural beauty, not taking it away from it as such, but making it harder to find. _Of course they did_ , after all, they would hardly be idiots if she were interested in them.

Hermione still wasn't glamorous, despite the situations he had often imagined her in depicting her thus. Her unruly hair was pulled back into a regulation looking french braid, a lot more successfully than many of the attempts she had made at the same style while they were in classes together. She was wearing Healer robes, they were transfigured into something to suit their more Muggle environment, but she had obviously done so quickly, the colour and emblems were still visible.

“Anthony?” a soft inquiring voice said, and he snapped out of what, he hoped, hadn't been an entirely apparent perusal of her.

“Ah, sorry, did you say something?” he managed in a slightly waving tone. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Hermione smiled again, one of her little, quirky smiles, the soft ones that barely changed the shape of her face but made her eyes shine with barely suppressed humour.

“I was just asking how you are?” she replied encouragingly, “I didn't expect to see you, in here of all places,” she said, waving her arm around their surroundings.

“No, I suppose not” he answered quickly, keen not to be seen gazing off into the middle distance again. “This place is near my parent’s house.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, but their brief reunion was interrupted by the barista shouting a mangled version of Hermione’s name which made the woman in question roll her eyes before she lunged forward to grab her cup. As her hand lifted she quickly glanced at her wrist and the watch exposed there, and when she turned back around he saw her eyes had widened comically.

“I am so _sorry,_ Antony, but I'm in a real rush, I didn't really even have time for this coffee. It's been manic today, a kid ate a whole box full of volcanic ants and he has been throwing up lava for three hours, and then there was a lady with a potions ladle inserted into… and…. well…” she rambled the words tumbling out one after the other as she stepped away from him. “It was great to see you though,” she finished before adjusting her jacket and making a beeline for the door.

“Yes,” Anthony replied earnestly. “You too Hermione,” he called after her just before the door could close behind her.

* * *

A week later, Anthony was in the coffee shop again, only this time he had asked to sit in. He made his way to a table in the middle of the cramped chairs and tried to decide whether to be grateful or not that the place was relatively empty.

He sat facing the door and put a book in front of him that he mostly ignored. Instead, he spent his time oscillating between agreeing with the voices in his head, telling him to _get back up and stop being so pathetic_ , and shutting them out so he could watch the door and the street beyond it.

Anthony had reasoned that seeing Hermione at the same time, on the same day the previous week had probably meant that she was there on a break. The fact that she was rushing must have meant it was the end of her allotted time, so today he came an hour before his last visit, despite the slim, slim, chance that she would appear.  

 _Not that he had reflected on it that much_ , he thought to himself derisively. Anthony sighed. Unfortunately, this behaviour wasn't all that unusual for him, not that he made a habit of stalking women. He had been aware of Hermione Granger since their first year at Hogwarts, and this was certainly not the first time he had deliberately put himself in her path, though admittedly, he did _usually_ pull himself straight back out of it as soon as he saw her.

At the end of their first year, the final grade results had been posted on the bulletin board outside the Great Hall; that's when he had first taken notice. There in the measured, even script of Professor McGonagall was ‘ _#1 Hermione Granger_ ’, and that wasn't even of Gryffindor that was of the whole year group. His name was listed in the top five, a position it remained in throughout his schooling.

Anthony had always been smart but Hermione was something more than that, her attitude towards study was legendary. She was a Muggleborn _determined_ to prove herself in a new world. As a half blood who shared magical and Jewish blood, Anthony thought he understood more than most some of the factors that made her who she was.

While he may have been aware of her from the off, he had felt he had _known_ her since the third year. Anthony had never been sure how or why but he always seemed to overhear conversations concerning her; people spoke of her often. Hermione wasn’t overly popular, not that it appeared to phase her, though he noted the number of people that went to her for advice. Hermione could be cold, hard and stubborn but also warm and caring towards those who needed it. She could be spectacularly closed minded if she believed she was in the right about something, which was often, but she also made herself a further topic of ridicule by publicly and steadfastly supporting causes that were close to her heart.

With that in mind, Anthony had attempted several times to speak to her, sometimes with a feigned academic question, and at times with a real one. Somehow, he thought Hermione might distrust any other approach; she didn't seem any more adept a small talk than he was, and Anthony had ascertained enough about her to know she was unused to people outside her little circle of select friends. No matter what the approach he settled on, the result was always the same; he always chickened out. 

Despite his interest, if he could have called it that at that stage, Anthony was shy. Sure he had great friends, got on with most of his house and even managed to attract a bit of female attention, but it took him a little while to warm up to people. All of his plans to gently set up a situation came to nothing, and as no natural chance ever presented itself, Anthony never got close.

He finally worked up the nerve to speak to Hermione in their fifth year, _sort of_. When himself and his friends in Ravenclaw heard that Hermione was arranging a meeting at the Hog's Head to talk about alternative training for Defence they had been determined to go along. She had stood before them all talking about Umbridge, passion shining on her face despite the apparent hesitation in the crowd. When she suggested they ‘take matters into their hands’ Anthony had managed a ‘here here’, and when the words left his lips, she had turned to smile at him, one of her bright, joyful smiles that illuminated her whole face and made her back straighten.

Two small words, and ones he hadn't even said to her, more shouted in her general direction. Anthony had felt ridiculous until he looked at Hermione, and saw how her eyes softened, how they seemed to say thank you in reply, of how relieved she was to have some support. Anthony remembered that non-conversation and cherished it as if it were a memory of an evening spent in each other's arms talking about their dreams.

Anthony had been half in love with Hermione Granger since the sixth year. Seeing her walk into Slughorn's party with Cormac, of all people, had sent him into a tailspin. He had blamed himself later when she was, seemingly unwillingly, kissed under the mistletoe. Maybe if _he_ had expressed his interest she would have gone with him, though Anthony knew he would never know.

Anthony couldn't even fool himself by making the hollow wish of a time-turner, even if he’d had his time again he knew he would never have acted on his impulses where she was concerned. Some might have said he had nothing to lose; his friends certainly saw it that way, he disagreed. Anthony had his hope, and as that was the only thing he was ever likely to have, he wouldn't throw it away on maybe, it was too precious for that. Instead, he drank _a lot_ of Firewhisky that night.

In their final year, Anthony had been so relieved when he saw her, finally, stumbling into the Room of Requirement, looking like absolute hell, that he had frozen. He had spent the whole year, living under the oppressive rule of the Carrows telling himself that if he ever saw Hermione again, he would ask her for a drink, dinner, anything, but as soon as he saw her, Anthony knew that he couldn't. He couldn’t shut out the voices that said he was a coward, even as he fought alongside the other child soldiers of his generation. Anthony couldn't shut them out because he agreed.

As the heavy glass door of the coffee shop clanged open Anthony looked up from the muffin he had shredded into a hundred pieces to see Hermione walking in shaking off an umbrella, _just like that_.

She spotted him as she walked in, and her beautiful, expressive eyes lingered on wholly unremarkable him. When recognition shone in her face, she gave him a little wave and one of her surprised smiles, one of the ones that looked as if it found its way onto her face before she had realised, and made her way to the counter.

Anthony looked back down and weighed his options; he could leave quickly, and if he ever saw her again he could say he had gotten an emergency call or something, _would that work?_ He supposed it didn't matter. She might not even notice. Or he thought... he could…

“Can I sit down?”

Anthony jumped at the intrusion into his thoughts and looked up to find Hermione holding a teacup, made of china, not styrofoam, and her face neutral waiting for a response.

“Sure, sure,” he said quickly, and he hoped casually, before reaching forward to hurriedly wipe the disintegrated muffin out of the way only to knock half of it on the floor. He was about to start apologising for his clumsiness _again_ , but Hermione didn't seem to have noticed.

“Sorry for running off the other day,” she said brightly, setting herself into the chair next to him. “I was late back from lunch break, and we were short staffed because of this…” she stopped herself and looked up a little sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry, boring I know.”

Anthony wanted to tell her that he wasn't sure she could ever say _anything_ boring but kept his mouth firmly shut still slightly awed that she was there let alone that she had opted to sit next to him.

“So what is it that you do?” Hermione murmured, reaching forward to rip into her pre-packed sandwich and looking at him expectantly. “I don’t think we’ve ever chatted at one of those god awful reunion things.”

Anthony’s throat dried. “Well, I work for Gringotts. I use advanced Arithmancy equations to help predict the Muggle stock exchange and advise them on their investments,” he said, using the simplest explanation that he had honed over the years.

“Wow, what a cool job.”

Anthony felt his heart stop, and his cheeks pink for a moment, but when he forced himself to look up, he realised, unbelievably, that Hermione wasn't being sarcastic.

“What’s it like working with the Goblins? I thought about working for them myself, once upon a time. Though,” she dropped her voice into a theatrical whisper, “they don’t like me very much on account of me setting free one of their dragons.”

Hermione gave him one of her secret smiles, one where her teeth bit into one side of her bottom lip as if fighting away the smirk that was starting on the other side, and despite his nerves, Anthony found himself smiling in return.

“Your picture is still behind the tills, you know on the ‘watch carefully’ list,” he answered conspiratorially, daring to dip his head forward just a fraction as she had done. Hermione boomed out a long laugh, and he felt his fingers come to rest on his mug rather than dancing along the porcelain surface.

She asked him question after question about his job, and she spoke at length about what she had been up to since Hogwarts. Anthony even managed a few questions himself until he looked over and spied the time.

“Hermione,” he said pointing to the clock, hating himself for being the one to remind her.

“Crap,” she murmured. “Where does the time go? Thank you for letting me sit with you,” and began layering herself back up.

 _Now or never_ , he thought to himself.

“Erm… Hermione,” he all but whispered as his fingers gripped the now cold cup in front of him tightly as if he could use it as an anchor. _After all how bad could it be?_

“Would you… err… would you go to dinner… with me?” he forced out, looking at her as much as he was able.

Hermione stopped to look at him, and her usually emotion filled expression was blank.

_He supposed he could always move to Ecuador; it looked beautiful, and the Goblins could probably transfer him._

Her perfect smile stretched across her face. It was the one that made her look so radiantly beautiful that it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “I would love that,” she said brightly, leaning forward to write a note on the scrap of her till receipt that was on the table. “That’s my floo and my mobile number, a mobile is a… oh, I probably don't have to explain that do it?”

Anthony smiled back at her, the first genuine one he had ever managed so close to her before, and shook his head. It hadn't sunk in yet, the nerves of what he had set in motion would come, but for now, he was riding high on a wave of previously undiscovered adrenaline, and he couldn't hold back. He released his grip on the cup to pick up the piece of paper she proffered, and he wondered if it would be too much to get it framed.

“Hermione, can I ask a quick question?” he asked, surprising himself.

She paused in her speedy actions to look back at him, mumbling her assent.

“What do you do, when you don’t go the reunions?”

Her face broke into a flush that had almost total coverage on her cheeks, and he immediately regretted asking, _this is what you get for pushing_ , clearly something a lot more exciting than he had ever experienced. Anthony felt sick as she leant over whispering, “You won’t tell anyone?”

Once he had given her assurances he didn't feel he could back away.

“I stay at home with my cat,” she said self-consciously but with a familiar bite of defiance. “I hate those things, all the faff and the dressing up to exchange the same old stories, I suppose I’m just a bit boring like that.”

Hermione smiled at him, one of her self-conscious smiles that betrayed she was nervous about his response to her admission, nervous of what he thought of her, and just like that; the hope was back.


	11. SIDE B: TRACK 1 Cornerstone

Track Listings for Side B:  
**Track 1: Cornerstone** / Arctic Monkeys [2 009] (Professor Cuthbert Binns x Minerva McGonagall)  
**Track 2: There’s A Light And It Never Goes Out** / The Smiths [1986] (Hermione Granger, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Colin Creevey, Dennis Creevey)  
**Track 3: I’m Not So Tough** / Lilse de Lange [1998] (Severus Snape x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 4: Are you Home?** / The Broods [2016] (Marcus Flint x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 5: Escape (The Pina Colada Song)** / Rupert Holmes [1979] (Antonin Dolohov x Hermione Granger) Pictures of You Universe  
**Track 6: Never Tear Us Apart** / INXS [1987] (Fenrir Greyback x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 7: My Type** / Saint Motel [2014] Pairing?  
**Track 8: Dark Paradise** / Lana Del Rey [2012] (Sirius Black x Hermione Granger)  
**Track 9: Jar of Hearts** / Christina Perri [2010] (Millicent Bulstrode x Charlie Weasley)  
**Track 10: Love The One You're With** / Stephen Stills [1970] (Cormac McLaggen x Lavender Brown)

* * *

**SIDE B - TRACK 1**

[Minerva McGonagall x Professor (Cuthbert) Binns]

_I thought I saw you in the rusty hook_   
_Huddled up in wicker chair_   
_I wandered up for a closer look  
And kissed whoever was sitting there_

Cornerstone / Arctic Monkeys [2009]

* * *

Reacting to dilating eyes of the man in front of her, Minerva leant forward, sloping her shoulders to align herself with his body the best she could in the confined space. Another hasty kiss, another strangled sigh and she felt her fur stole slip, drifting from being cradled around her neck to draping over her ankles in the footwell. Minerva paid it no mind. Shuffling forwards, she leaned at a different angle to get over the awkwardly positioned gear stick and bit back a laugh as she failed to get comfortable. She supposed she should have been more careful of the new-looking car interior, but she hadn't been prepared. Well, for this subtle dance and merging of lips she had, but the quality of his car had been a surprise. Minerva had never been a great lover of surprises. Surprises meant you hadn’t planned adequately; they meant you had left yourself exposed. She hadn't adjusted her planned attack, for an attack it was, though maybe she should have been a little more considerate of the soft leather.

Minerva couldn't blame herself for not foreseeing this, in every other way he had seemed so practical, conservative, and measured. It was those  _reliable_ qualities that had drawn her to him in the first place. _There had been so many shadows of_ … but that didn't matter now.

He falteringly laid a hand on her arm as his other hand connected with her knee, and Minerva registered somewhere in the back of her mind that his fingers were trembling, but she pushed it back behind the wall. The wall where all of her other negative thoughts were hanging out together, tutting at her recent bout of wanton behaviour. A chill alerted her that her stockings had been exposed, her skirt had ridden up thanks to her jostling and Minerva attempted to right herself as much as she was able. _There were limits after all_.

As he rubbed hesitant circles against her knee, Minerva idly ruminated that her mother would have been appalled if she had known what her daughter was up to on this foggy Saturday night. Kissing a man she had only had two dates with, in his car. Minerva privately thought that it wasn't the act itself that would have upset her mother, but the passion she displayed. She had been brought up to believe that kissing a partner was an entirely perfunctory business, something that women _had_ to do, and as such, it was best just to get on with it. She was further instructed that necessary as such liberties were, it was vital to remember not to be too encouraging, _lest he gets ideas._

This particular _display_ probably looked more passionate from the outside than it felt inside her body. Minerva was mainly coaxing herself through it. To her it had been something to  _try out_ , she wanted to see if she _could_ do it.

The back of her newish shoes pinched, and Minerva pushed her knees forward, into his hand, to alleviate some of the pressure on her heels. That he read the move as a show of her increasing interest was a bonus.

It had been leading up to this since their date started. Minerva had picked her outfit with special care, sending subtle signals that she wanted to move things along. She wore a darker hue on her lip and had a less subtle sweep of liner on her eyelid. She had given him long sideways glances in the cinema as they had sat in together, while he placed her hand in his and massaged the back...

“Minerva,” he breathed out, his voice harsh, the heat of his words clawing against her neck. Just like that, the pretence was gone, the sound of his voice, the tone he used… it was _all_ wrong.

Minerva instantly pulled back, moving her body away from the warmth of his and looked at him, _really looked at him_ , trying _valiantly_ to prevent her frame from giving into the slump she had just felt in her mind. She studied him for a moment and blinked, suddenly all of the imaginings seemed pointless, the inaccuracies were so glaring they positively screamed at her. There would be no going back now.

She sat better on the seat, primly lifting her bum, and pulling down her skirt as much as she was able to smooth the end over her knees. “Take me home,” she said in a quiet voice, a voice not half as affected or breathy as his had been.

He didn't protest; he just nodded blandly, and the car roared to life a moment later. As he turned the wheel, Minerva noticed his robes didn't have patches on the elbows, as he checked the lights she saw his glasses weren't quite the same. His eyes were too _alive_.

* * *

After Minerva had choked out a simple goodbye, she exited the car, waiting until it had disappeared from view before pulling out her compact to readjust herself in the mirror. She eyed her reflection critically; _twenty-five_ she sighed.  _Twenty-five and still chasing rainbows._

* * *

Minerva walked into the flat she shared with Poppy to find the other girl leaning one shoulder against the wall waiting for her. “Another non-starter?” she asked with a quirk of her brow, wiggling the wooden spoon that was clasped in her fingers.

Minerva made a face hoping to relate her disinterest without articulation. She couldn't bring herself to speak yet. She kicked off her heels and walked towards her room.

“You have to stop being so fussy, a girl of your age,” Poppy called over her shoulder. “They’ll stop crawling around soon.”

Minerva didn't know if that was such a bad thing.

* * *

The next time she wore the shoes that pinched, Minerva was navigating the over-long drive up to Hogwarts school, her mind as occupied as ever. She wasn't sure if this was such a great idea.

She hadn't been back since she had graduated, and it seemed strange to view the impressive castle as an adult. She wondered if all of her cultivated fancies about the place would come back or whether she was too jaded to enjoy the enchantment of it now. She reached into her bag to ensure the letter was still there, gripping her fingers around the parchment that had gone soft from being handled so often.

The missive from Albus Dumbledore had arrived as she had been debating what to do next. Life at the Ministry was challenging and rewarding, but frustrating beyond measure, and she wanted to be able to affect more change.

Albus Dumbledore was someone Minerva had admired while in attendance herself. The Transfiguration Professor was masterful, wise and a good sight more in tune with the ways of the modern world, not to mention the aspirations of the modern witch, than Headmaster “Dippy” Dippet. And apparently, he needed an apprentice, ‘a role with a view to taking over the position’ his note had said.

Minerva was flattered, certainly, and a small part of her couldn't shut away the from voice that whispered that long ago this would have been her dream. But that was all it had been in the end a dream.

* * *

_Minerva McGonagall stood in front of the tarnished mirror and pulled her hair back into a simple chignon, out of her face. She never wore her long, dark locks down, not at school, where such an act would give her a relaxed demeanour. She had worked too hard to give the opposite impression of herself. Not at home where it would have been seen as too progressive for her conservative Mother._

_As a girl of recently turned seventeen, her primary focus in life was to make people think she was older.  If Minerva couldn't achieve that, then she delighted when, despite knowing her exact age, they would say she was ‘an old soul’ or her favourite ‘you have an old head on your shoulders’. She longed to be respected, consulted on her views asked her thoughts, regardless of the age and gender that worked against her._

_Stepping back from the mirror so she could see her the top of her chest, she straightened her hard-earned Head Girl badge and walked into the corridor, ducking clusters of students as she went._

_Minerva didn't think in the same way as her peer group that much was obvious, though they had a very definite set of ideas about her, they were just too stupid to realise she had given them most of them. Curt, grave and dominant, that was how she was regularly described. The words brought a smile to her face._

_When she had come to school, Minerva had changed herself in subtle ways, nothing overly dramatic, more of a redrawing of her outline than a total revision. She let the Scottish inflexion in her tone shine through; she had always liked the way the brogue licked at the words; it gave her an air of exasperated impatience that she enjoyed immensely. She dressed prominently in dark colours, sharp angles and clean lines. Her makeup was sparse, and she used it to define her features rather than mask them. ‘Not delicate’, ‘not soft enough’ she heard whispered most often, words that signalled that her desired metamorphosis was complete._

_As if she cared that the rabble didn't think her the type of girl to wear a pretty dress and stand by walls, waiting politely for a dance to be requested, pah! Minerva McGonagall was a witch in a time for wizards. When she had first started at Hogwarts, she realised that she was as strong as any of her male counterparts. By her second year, she knew she would have to be stronger for it to matter. Minerva was determined to make her way in the world without having to rely on a marriage contract to open doors for her. Anything she achieved would be through her blood, sweat and tears, and it would all be worth it._

_Her fingers twitched around the edges of her worn textbook as she walked into the back of the classroom. She sashayed between the banks of desks taking her usual seat and withdrawing her parchment to set up her materials. None of the other students, not even her closest friends, would know that she had a secret. That's what she called it; ‘her secret’. ‘Crush’ was such a juvenile word, Minerva wanted no association with it, especially now her emotions made it seem like a paltry representation of what she felt._

_Finished with her bag, she arranged herself formally at her desk and waited for the lesson to begin, bang on the hour like it always did. Professor Cuthbert Binns would speak for fifty minutes exactly, never faltering in his steady monotone delivery, never wavering in his projection whatever was going on in the room._

_As the clock glided towards the hour, their Professor stood from the comfortable chair stationed at the bottom of the room, the seats all above him, arranged like a circle amphitheatre. He looked up disinterested and when the room fell silent, he eyed the hands of the clock to his right, with the final click of the expected hand he sucked in a breath and began his speech._

_Minerva wrote furiously, eager to catch every considered word. They all called him boring, but she didn't think so. No one seemed to appreciate that he stood there, under the gaze of all of them, and spoke without adjusting his tone or speed and all without any notes. All of that information and insight from memory alone, it was astounding to her. The other students fell asleep, bored out of their minds by the rhythmic reciting of dates and battles, but Minerva focused with rapt attention._

_People said he was an awful teacher, but she didn't agree with that either. If they just listened they would discover what she knew; what he said was always intelligent and sometimes, some blissful times, rather funny. He just didn't seem to care whether or not they kept up. He didn't pander or coddle._

_Minerva didn't want to be coddled._

_When she knew he had gone off on a tangent, she remembered things, little things, like when he made a slim joke about the illegality of appeal rejections made during the campaign for Centaur rights, and she had smiled, quite inadvertently. Minerva hadn't meant to, by now she was used to schooling her features into severe lines, but his quip had permeated her shell, and she had responded. As his eyes had swept around the room he had caught her expression, it made his flow of words falter for half a second, just a brief pause, no longer than a heartbeat, but it was something shared, her unfamiliar expression and his silence._

_It was something._

_When Minerva felt she could glance unobserved, she did so. Her professor was wholly unremarkable at first glimpse; regulation brown trousers and a plain white shirt. He donned some variant of that outfit every day, sometimes adding a well-worn blazer, or sometimes, with less frequency, when it was cold, a chunky knit cardigan. She wondered, during those months if he had someone. Possibly the special person who knitted that jumper? Or maybe they only brought it, but they chided him into wearing it on mornings when frost attacked the glass of their bedroom, lest he got cold._

_He made a point, a momentary interjection of his own thoughts into proceedings and Minerva knew no one would have noticed, she wanted to shake them awake, and at the same time, she was loathed to share him. She disagreed with his assessment, not based on fundamentals values he purported but the application of law he was suggesting. She longed to put her hand up, to argue with him, but that was not what they did here. That was not what his classes were._

_Minerva leant back down into her bag for a second bottle of ink; her moves were deliberately gentle so as not to jostle the sleeping students all around her. She couldn't say when she first knew she was in love with him. She knew now that her feelings were way more than a harboured torch, though she tried not to think of it often._

_It was easy for her to grasp the one-sided nature of her affections and they did not make for satisfying reflection material. Minerva supposed she really knew when she became aware she was judging everyone against him, measuring them against what had seemed at the time like a conjured list of criteria. Until she compared her desires to him, she could see it then, with perfect clarity, that her mind had not created such a wish list from scratch, no, it had merely traced his outline._

_No one she met was ever quite there. Something would be off; some line wouldn't fit. When she accepted that a re-drawing wasn't likely, she knew she had to revisit and revise her options. Never let it be said that Minerva McGonagall wasn't a realist. When she knew it was not going away, she considered the time frames she had to work with. She would be leaving soon, leaving school and leaving the classification that came with it. She could approach him then, not as a student but as a young woman._

_Minerva moved a full side of parchment to the other side of the desk to dry and began on a fresh sheet. Did he live in Hogsmeade? She wondered, or maybe in the school itself. He was older than her clearly, though she knew he wasn’t married. Did he still yearn for children?_

_Minerva packed her books away at the end of the lesson, her harsh noises waking up the slumbering heads around her, she paid them no notice. Three more weeks. She hoped he would give her the opportunity to get answers to all of her questions._

* * *

Minerva sat in the little chair in front of Headmaster Dippet, glad to be off her feet. She nodded her head in all the right places as he went on, and on, and on. She tried to smile at his simpering, but it was unnatural. She had never perfected a good fake smile; she had never wanted to do such a thing when she was young. _Idealistic_ , she thinks now; she had no idea how much she would need that smile as an adult.

In fairness to the charmless man in front of her, it was not all his fault. At least partly it was being here again, in the building where the events somehow turned her fondest wish into something of a cruel joke. Just the mere act of quirking her lips seemed an almost impossible task given the weight she could feel dragging her down.

Finally, he was done with her, and she stood, towering over the man as she was invited to head to the staff room and meet her ‘colleagues’. Minerva left the office with a spring in her step, eager, but the excitement of momentary freedom was long gone by the time she reached the intended door, the adrenaline had wilted away leaving her exposed, once again, to the all-consuming tide of her mounting trepidation.

* * *

_It was the very last week of her final term when it happened. Minerva had had her speech prepared for three months by that point. Perfected, at least she thought so. Each time Minerva saw him, she could feel the anxiety building in her chest. Soon, she would tell herself and push her fingers under her legs to stop herself fidgeting._

_She was sat in the front of that particular lesson and so wasn't one of the first to see. She had begun moving forward as the day of her departure neared, it didn't seem as essential to feign indifference given her intentions. Though she couldn't see what was happening she heard the commotion from the back of the room immediately. A disorder in his classroom was almost unheard of, and Minerva sat up in her seat, disquiet straightening her spine. What was happening?_

_Her professor got to the front and precisely on the hour began his speech, just like usual, though this time no one drifted off into a peaceful sleep. Every student in the room stared at him with the same level of intensity she did when no one else was watching, and Minerva felt the breath catch in her throat. Her eyes ran over his regular clothes, the way the natural curl of his hair was visible in the long strands at the back, towards his starched collar. All the same, except he was translucent._

_After ten minutes of speech, ten minutes where nothing was explained someone put their hand up. Minerva didn't know who, her brain couldn't process who the voice belonged to._

_“Professor Binns?” the little voice said when the hand was ignored._

_Cuthbert, as she had called him privately for so long, started in response to the unexpected interruption. “Yes, Mister… Er?”_

_“Belby, Sir. Um… are you a…  are you a ghost?... Sir?”_

_“Yes, it would appear so,” he replied with no inflexion whatsoever. “Seemingly I fell asleep in front of the staffroom fire last night and well, when I woke up this morning and got out of the chair I left my body behind.”_

_He made a little chuckle, a sound Minerva had longed to hear from him for so long, and yet now she heard it the sound scratched at her throat. It made her stomach feel like it was contracting violently, she stifled a gasp as her eyes watered and she tried not to double over._

_“Anyway,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “we should continue, discussions like this are most irregular.”_

_With that, he carried on speaking until the end of his allotted fifty minutes, but when the class was over Minerva didn't pack away her things, she sat still as all of those around her fled in a cloud of boisterous, happy noise. She sat for what felt like forever until he looked up at her, it was cruel how she could still see so much in his eyes even though they weren't really there. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, when he took a step towards her, she made a sound, an incoherent sound, a wounded sound._

_“Miss McGonagall,” he muttered, “is everything alright?”_

_Minerva swallowed against the rough feeling in her throat and stood onto shaky legs, determined to ignore the way her knees knocked. “I am... fine… Professor,” she muttered finally, and with arms like lead she swept the parchment that littered her desk into her bag with none of her usual organisation, she would sort it out later. For once the paper was blank._

_He nodded once, a tiny movement and she turned to leave, to get someplace else, anywhere else. “Miss McGonagall,” he called when she was a couple of steps from the door, “good luck in your future.”_

_Her shoulders sagged, what future?_

* * *

Moment of indecision past, Minerva pushed against the door into the glowing warmth of the staff room, she was greeted warmly by her former teachers and introduced to a few new faces. Dumbledore welcomed her enthusiastically, ‘no one better’ he said, ‘I’m sure you’ll love it here’.

When she had made it once around the room, Minerva allowed her eyes to search for him, and there he was, sat in front of the fire, the one that had probably seen to his death. There was no real expression on his face as he read the book in front of him; he didn't come over to say hello or smile at her in welcome. She wasn't surprised. She wasn't even saddened. Minerva hoped that with the reticence he had shown during life seemingly increasing now he was… a ghost, she would able to get used to his presence and move past it. She accepted a cup of tea and an invitation to sit at the other end of the room.

* * *

Her avoidance worked, after a fashion, things became routine. Minerva began to immerse herself once again in the simple joys of the castle. That was until term started. Busy as she was she couldn't resist the draw to go back to his classroom, to sit and take in one of his unrelenting speeches.

_What harm could it do?_

By the end of the first term, she had joined one class a week, sitting against the back wall and watching him intently. Silenced and disillusioned for necessity so that the students didn't notice the gently falling tears that become wracking sobs by the end of the hour. Minerva fancied that she saw his eyes fall on her a few times, but she swiftly discounted it.

The visits tailed off as her teaching career continued, falling away until she barely made one visit a term, then one a year.

* * *

It was ten years before she found out, she stumbled across the information in the back of a dusty old book she was relocating in the library. Written there in plain language, something she had never bothered to consider:

_‘Concealment spells, useful as they may be, are not infallible. One can train themselves to become aware of their use. A further failing and one without complete explanation is that no variant of the magic involved has ever had any effect on any classification of the undead, i.e. vampires or ghosts’._


	12. SIDE B: TRACK 2 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

**SIDE B - TRACK 2**

[Hermione Granger / Justin Finch-Fletchley / Colin Creevey / Dennis Creevey]

_And if a ten ton truck_   
_Kills the both of us_   
_To die by your side_   
_Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine  
Oh, there is a light and it never goes out_

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out / The Smiths [1986]

* * *

Explosions rang out every few seconds. The roaring, layered sounds seemed to shake the walls, disturbing the very structure of the room. The rumbling aftermath caused cascades of grey, debris-filled smoke to crash down on their heads. Hermione reactively closed her eyes each and every time. She should be used to the unexpected by now she thought despairingly, and yet she had never learnt to control her shudders or her gasps fully. Previously she had been perversely proud of her emotional behaviour, believing it showed that despite the horrors she had lived through she still had her humanity. It was of no use to her now.

Tears had finally started falling a few moments before, Hermione no longer had the will to stop them; there didn't seem to be a point anymore. It had all gone so wrong. Harry wasn't supposed to die. They had worked too long, and too hard for it to have ended like that. When Harry, her friend, her brother, had walked into the forest she had _begged_ to go with him, but he had been determined, like everything else he had wanted to do it by himself. That was the one time she didn't fight him, _much_ , she gave in to his demands all the while knowing it was the wrong thing to do.

Then his body had been brought back. That was all. Just his body. No trace of the energetic boy with permanently messy hair, a dry sense of humour and forever up to his eyes in trouble. He was gone. For the first time in her short life, Hermione failed to comprehend something. She looked at him, cradled in Hagrid’s arms, and turned to Ron her brow pinched in confusion. Even her friend's mournful look hadn’t snapped her out of her fog. It took a long time to process the swathes of black in front of her; the Death Eater army stood menacingly facing them. Harry wasn't there to stand in front of them anymore; there was no one to gather behind, no one to slip his hand silently into hers and squeeze. There was no comforting gesture to let her know it would all be alright. Because it wouldn't be, not now.

When the Dark Lord began taunting them Hermione felt her heart constrict; her lungs failed in their job of sending oxygen around her body. There had been hope before but not now, not now his smirking lips had parted to share the fruits of _his_ last year. It had never occurred to Hermione that Voldemort might have worked out what they were doing, their secret mission had been just that, _a well-guarded secret_. Even the Order hadn't known. Hermione had assumed _he_ would think that they had gone into hiding. She shouldn't have underestimated a man that had come back from the dead. They had been so tied up in their battle against starvation that when they faced the revelation that six had become seven they had no idea how out of date their information was.

While they had been scampering around the country the Dark Lord had learnt his lesson, he had been making more horcruxes, all of which - he assured them cruelly - would never be found. Most people looked on at him blankly, but his gaze had fixed on Hermione enough times during his speech that she was convinced he knew of her involvement. She wondered what the punishment was for a Mudblood that had tried to destroy his soul. Somehow she didn’t think that death was going to seem like such a bad thing in a few hours. Death was where Harry was; death was safe.

A hand tucked into hers, and for a moment, with her closed eyes, she thought it was Harry, a little blissful interlude that shattered as soon as the acrid smell of spellfire resonated. Hermione pried opened her eyes and looked into the face of Colin Creevey; it was so strange to see him not smiling.

* * *

Colin Creevey looked at Hermione Granger and fought to keep the fear he felt from reflecting on his face. Her sadness was _so heavy_ it was adding weight to the air around him, the depth of her feeling pushing him further onto the ground. He had been standing near her when Harry had been brought back; he had watched as the steely resolve that she had displayed since childhood; set jaw and thinning lips evaporated. Colin had stood motionless as the realisation of what she was looking at hit her. Hermione did not fall to the floor, scream or cry but she fissured, and the cracks were deep. That’s when he knew it was over. He had looked up to Harry his whole life, but Hermione had been the one he had tried to emulate. She always had the answer, a retort, a plan. Her silence on the field of battle; it was the loudest sound he heard that day.

But the suffering hadn’t been over; _cracks could heal_ he told himself desperately, but when Neville was taken down she was no longer cracked she had been cleaved wide open. Colin wished he could have unseen that, more so than anything else he had witnessed in that year of terrors. Neville, the _bravest_ of them all had beheaded the snake, but the buoyancy gained from his act was stripped away only seconds later when he met the same fate. Hermione had broken then, babbling words barely audible and wringing her hands in front of herself until her jagged nails left trails of blood across her palms.

He pulled Hermione towards him, wrapping his arm around her as she shook, discarding the camera that had been in his grasp in the process, and setting it down on the dusty floor. As she left wet trails on his neck, he looked down at the reflective glass on the shutter of his dad’s old camera. He had been so proud to be given it when he joined school; Muggles couldn't come to the campus, and his father had asked him to take pictures so he and his mother could see when he got home. Colin, at eleven, had nodded solemnly as if this had been a gravely serious task. It was one that he had undertaken with gusto. When he Colin come home that first Christmas with more pictures of people he had met than the school itself he had expected his parents to be upset, but they weren’t, his dad had beamed, and his mum’s voice had gone a little thick for reasons he couldn't understand at the time. He had still kept the camera with him until Dennis started at Hogwarts and feeling that it was the right thing to do he passed it over to him. Doing so as seriously as he had when he was first given the treasure.

“This is not _just_ a camera” he had said to his younger brother.

“No?” Dennis had said while looking up at the camera with awe, his fingers reaching out to touch it.

It was a talisman, not that he would have said that at the time, it was his reminder of the simple joy of his beginnings of life in the magical world. The bridging point that allowed him to cross between his two existences. He wouldn't need it now. Nothing good was going to happen from here.

He had almost died. _He had almost died_. Despite the repugnance of the last year, despite everything he had seen, it still felt ridiculous, _they were children,_ this wasn't supposed to happen. Colin felt the trembling of the girl in his arms slow, and he looked down at her. Colin remembered waking up next to Hermione, in the Hospital wing, years before, at a point in his life that seemed so far away now. He pictured how she had jumped straight from the bed as soon as her body had responded to her mind's commands, headless of Madam Pomfrey's protests, how she had raced over to her friends, checking them over as if she hadn't been the one in bed for weeks.

Crashes sounded in the corridor outside of the little room, and Colin’s head fell back against the wall. They were getting closer, he mused. There wasn't much more time.

When Neville’s body had crashed to the floor, a deathly silence fell over the battlefield. Voldemort had raised a brow, almost daring the other side to send another _soldier_ forward. No one moved. Everything after that had moved at twice the previous pace. The Death Eaters had fought with renewed vigour, victory within their grasp now, Colin thought he saw some people fall, he didn't have time to check.

He would see this out. He would be as brave as possible for all of them. He nodded his head and set his jaw turning to face his little brother; he wouldn't let him see his fear.

* * *

Dennis saw his brother nod, resolve creeping into his eyes and tried to follow his example like he always did. He wasn't wholly successful, but he did manage to suppress the trembling of his lip. Colin reached out and placed an arm on his shoulder; Dennis felt himself relax a fraction under its weight, taking strength from his big brother's presence even if he had no reassurance to give.

Dennis had never had his brother's confidence, though he made a good show of it. Whereas Colin had thrown himself into everything with passion and vitality, he had never been sure that he was made for this world. Not that he would have turned it down. The whole Creevey family had been overjoyed when Colin received his letter, and then almost struck mute in awe when he got his. Dennis had been beyond excited. He knew it wasn't always the case in Muggle families that all the children would have magic, he had fervently wished it but had been trying to prepare himself for the worst, just in case. Dennis wouldn't have let his brother feel bad if he had to attend a regular school. Then the owl with that seal, the seal that when he closed his eyes at night, he allowed himself to imagine had arrived. The very idea that he would be able to follow his beloved brother to the magical castle was too good to be true.

Then he had attended and learnt all the things that Colin never mentioned in his stories or showed in his pictures. Children called him names, pushed him in the corridors, sneered at him. At the end of that first year, Cedric Diggory had died. Kind, popular Cedric, who for the students at Hogwarts had almost been a celebrity, was tossed aside as a ‘spare’. It was a cruel realisation to find that to the world outside the school nothing mattered, not their age, not their warmth, not that they tried, none of it.

Dennis had joined Dumbledore’s Army in his second year and broke his first school rule to sneak into Hogsmeade and attend the clandestine meeting in the Hog’s Head. It had all seemed like something of a grand adventure; a tale almost lifted from one of his children's books; secret meetings, code names all that stuff. When he got to the first session and was handed his coin it was like getting his letter all over again, though this time he had _earnt_ his inclusion, had worked for it. The noises in the corridors stopped affecting him as much, when they said unkind things he would feel for the comforting disc in his pocket and remind himself that he belonged, that he mattered, that he made a difference.

Dennis had joined in with the older children even though he wasn't supposed to and had loved every minute of it. Those same friends, those that he had stood with him, in defiance against the tyranny of The Ministry had been the ones he had seen fall before Voldemort and his forces. Those students that had seemed like giants to him, as he stood before them, small for his age and overeager, those children that had appeared like the truest of soldiers, the dark forces pushed them aside as if they were no more than blades of grass.

He was no match for what was coming, and somehow even though his dad was a milkman, a man who had never hurt a fly, a man who had no idea of the dangers in the worlds his son occupied, somehow it was still his fight. Dennis thought of his parents, their smiling faces as his mum hugged him tightly, telling him how ‘she had always known her boys were special’. _How would they react to knowing they were both gone?_

A sudden silence made the occupants of the room still, terrifying as the explosions were Dennis knew enough to recognise that the sound stopping didn't bode well for them. In the last silence, the last one that had fallen across the courtyard Voldemort had addressed them all, given the option to change sides or be killed. Though that option wasn't for the Muggleborns amongst them, there would be no place for them.

Dennis had battled his way to his brother’s side, dragging him from the fray to attempt to make it back to the ruins of the room of requirement. Despite visible damage, it still opened for them, whether the magic manifested itself through their desperation he would never know.

When they had got inside, into a room that was the size of a large broom cupboard, there were only four of them. All of the other _impure_ children had gone, trampled into the dirt where the whispering had always told him they belonged. They warded the door shut as best they could and fell to the floor. Justin Finch-Fletchley was _covered_ in blood and held a scattered looking Hermione Granger under one arm.

“She just stood there,” he said, his typical exasperated tone did little to cover the fear reverberating in the back of his voice.

There was nothing they could do now. The danger was on the other side of the door, and there was no other way out.

* * *

Justin did what he could to clean the blood from his hands, through his fingers shook as he conjured the water to do so. He wasn't sure why it mattered, their captors weren't going to care, in fact, they might even be so disgusted at the _filth_ covering his hands that they won't touch him, he scoffed. The simple fact was that the blood was sticky and he had been raised not to make a mess. While he could agree that it was of little importance given the danger they were in, he had been raised a certain way. In this world where he was branded as _wrong and unnatural_ because of who his parents were, upholding their teachings seemed like a final, small act of defiance, the only thing he had left in his arsenal.

Justin looked back at Hermione and swallowed the bile back down in his throat. She hadn’t moved when the fighting started; her eyes remained flickering between Neville and Harry while wands were drawn all around her. He wondered how many people knew that Neville and the golden girl was more than friends; Justin imagined it was very few; Hermione didn't even know that he knew.

Justin had stumbled across them one night, kissing by the greenhouses, Neville’s fingers leaving soil tainted trails across her flushed cheeks. His first thought had been to draw attention to himself, mock them, or simply steal into the night with plans to tell everyone tomorrow. That all changed when they broke apart, when he saw the tears clinging to both their eyelashes, there was more to their secrecy than he had initially thought.

When he saw her motionless he intended leaving her there, though that was mainly the fear talking, one Muggleborn target was bad enough; two was asking for trouble. In the end, he tucked her under his arm and made it back to the castle. He needed to get inside; battling would be easier if he could at least get a wall to his back, hopefully by then she would have come to. He could do with her fabled prowess now.

Justin pushed his head back against the dark wood. How he had hated her when he first joined here. He had come to Hogwarts fully prepared to be welcomed with open arms, to be as easily recognised as belonging to the elite as he was at home. Children are more susceptible to these things than parents image, the cut of clothes, the crispness of accents the hints about home life; they arranged themselves in groups of equal social standing. He came from a wealthy family, with money, connections and taste; he was destined to be desired, revered and maybe even slightly feared. Only when he introduced himself, smugly, it was to find that no one cared. None of it mattered; the rules of the game were the same here, but his _dirty blood_ counted him out of playing.

And then there was Hermione Granger. In his world she would have been a nobody, here she was less than that, as insignificant as he was and yet it didn't bother her. She got the best grades; she walked around like she owned the place and wore her Muggle born status like a crown upon her head. People barely remembered his name, those that did didn't think well of him. Her, though they sneered and pushed her around they talked of her constantly, she wasn't the students darling, but she had their respect, albeit they would never have admitted it. He _hated_ her. He thought he hated her.

And then the last year had happened, the year of blood and pain. He had learnt what hate was then when it was directed at him, when he felt it for others. But he hadn't left, he had thought about it, oh god he had thought about it, but he never left. For better or worse this was his home. Running would only have meant living his life in fear, there were no more options now.

The silence was broken by a spine-tingling sound, the ram of something large against the door reverberated around the small place, and unconsciously they all shifted together. He wondered if it would be quick? He imagined not. When the noise pounded against the door again he sucked in a breath; he had heard a crack; he was sure of it; the telltale sound should have rendered him immobile, and yet it didn't, it lit what was left of his fire.

“Get up!” he called, scrambling to his feet to find three sets of eyes following him blankly. “We go out fighting. I will not sit on this floor cowering like a beaten animal, not like the filthy creature they think I am,” his vision became watery, but he set his jaw, _determined_. He was right, and they all knew it.

Hermione got to her feet first, her legs slightly unresponsive but she gripped her wand tightly and took up position by the door. The Creevey brothers followed suit, and soon they were all stood awaiting their fate.

“I would just like to say,” Granger began, and Justin coughed through the tightening in his throat, “that whatever happens from here… I…”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off by another large bang followed by the sound of splintering wood. Juston reached his hand out next to him to grip Dennis by the shoulder and widened his stance, raising his arm offensively, _preparing_. If this was how it was to end, he would do it surrounded by those who had suffered the same fate, the children of the insignificant; it would be on their terms.


	13. SIDE B: TRACK 3 I'm Not So Tough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to the amazing itisariddle who asked for this song (her theme for Sevmione), and a scene that features fire. Hope you like.

**SIDE B - TRACK 3**

[Hermione Granger x Severus Snape]

_I know that you've been hurt before_   
_Well, so have I, what can you do  
That doesn't mean you close the door_

  
I'm Not So Tough / Ilse De Lange [1998]

* * *

Severus sat on the cold dirt where the grass had never grown and watched as the relatively controlled flames danced across the crumbling remains of his childhood home. Felix Mulciber had waxed lyrical about the comforting nature of fire. Before now, Severus had written off his prolonged speeches as nothing more than the troubling ramblings of the dangerously unhinged but now, as he sat in the middle of the afternoon cloaked in more notice me not charms than he would have thought possible to cast, he thought he might have understood. A more disconcerting thought he had not had for years.

Still, he sat on the desolate ground, looking up despite the heat irritating his eyes as Spinner’s End burnt to the ground.

The idea had always been to sell it; Merlin knew he needed the money, but then that had derailed like everything else when he had attempted to do so after surviving Nagini's venom.

Severus hadn't expected to be there, having had no desire to meet with people who would occupy his old home, but the witless agent had contacted him, he had brought the wrong keys to the property, the dolt. The thin man in the cheap suit wouldn't listen to Severus’ surly insistence that he should break in and be done with it. ‘Wouldnt send the right message,’ he had said. Reluctantly, Severus had shown up. He had drifted past the waiting young couple and made it through opening the door with barely a grunt, turning to leave before a bump against his knees blocked him.

When he looked down, scowl in full force, he saw a little boy, a little boy with wide eyes, a jumper too big for him and a mass of black hair. For a moment Severus thought that the clawing at his throat indicated some of his stitches had come loose, but his inquiring fingers came back clean. Severus marched from the property without another word, but he sent a letter to the agent informing him that it was no longer for sale, despite feeling sick at his show of softness. The idea of another child living in that house, now that he had seen him, it was unconscionable.

That was how Hermione found him, staring into the flames that by then had destroyed the top floor as he worked his way through his second pack of cigarettes. She didn't say anything, _mercifully_ , she just collapsed down next to him and sat at his side.

He didn't bother asking how she had found him; the girl had been a consistent nuisance since the war, showing up all the time with brightness and too many questions that as far as he could tell were genuine and kindly meant. For a lifetime spy, the ease in which she infiltrated his life was disconcerting. Severus hated her for it in a small way. Yet when the sky turned darker, and she rested her head on his shoulder he didn't flinch, nor did he hesitate to remove the outer layer of his clothing as he felt a tremor move through her, placing his cloak around her small shoulders delicately, so as not to disturb her too much.

When he was sure that her gaze was averted, he looked down for the first time since her arrival. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open, the light was falling across her face and highlighting her cheeks, looking just like she had that morning.

Waking up in bed next to Hermione Granger had never been part of the plan, not that he’d had a plan for this. Severus was very much aware that he was supposed to be dead and beyond that, sex had seemed so surplus to requirements for such a long time he hadn't even missed it. Well, until he had it. He was pretty sure he would miss it again now. Should it be taken away.

 _But she was here wasn't she?_ Severus supposed he should say something, apologise for his dawn flee at least, but what could he say? ‘I’m sorry, but when I woke up and found myself in bed with you, the first person I have let my guard down with in over twenty years I had a panic attack’. _I’m sure that would go down swimmingly._

As the last of the embers burnt out, she fidgeted. “Is it done?” she asked, stretching up to rotate her shoulders.

“It’s done,” he answered slowly.

“Okay,” she called as she stood from the hard ground, rubbing one of her delicate hands over her eyes. Severus knew what those hands felt like; they burned as well as soothed. When she righted herself she held one of them out, her fingers stretching towards him and he stared at it. “Are you coming?” Her words were casual, but he could hear the quiet hurt in her tone. Severus closed his eyes against the guilt that crept into his pores. He felt more than heard her hand drop.

She shifted on her feet a little before she walked away, just another one of those ways that her physicality betrayed how she was feeling. Severus had scolded her for it at the start, mocked her inability to keep her thoughts private. At some point, he had begun to find it reassuring. He’d known for twenty minutes that she was going to try before she kissed him, he was grateful for the warning when her lips landed on his; it gave him time to quell his reaction.

On her third step, he stood himself, his legs acting almost without his mind's consent and panic made him call for her. “Hermione.” There was desperation in his tone, but no one would have picked up on it — no one, except maybe her.

“Yes,” she answered thickly as she turned back around to face him. Her eyes were a little wet, and he bit the inside of his cheek. Severus had always been good with words; he knew the particular ways to twist a sentence to get the best marks, the structure of a compliment to give the grandest illusion of deference. He knew what to say to hurt; all of those things came as naturally to him as breathing, until it mattered. As soon as someone else was relying on his words, hanging on to the sentences he would share as if they mattered they would never work. It was like writing an essay with someone else's notes, singing with the wrong music playing. All attempts had led to disastrous results.

Instead, he reached forward and gripped Hermione’s hand. It was her turn to stare silently as their fingers loosely entwined. Eventually, he felt the minutest of tugs, and she began walking towards the apparition point in silence again.

Somehow it had been enough.


	14. SIDE B: TRACK 4 Are You Home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you to wonderful nauticalparamour who requested this song and a Hermione centric story with one of the younger Slytherins. I hope you like :)

 

**SIDE B - TRACK 4**

[Hermione Granger x Marcus Flint]

_Are you home tonight?_   
_Are you alone tonight?_   
_You've been drinking and I'm thinking_   
_Are we sinking?_   
_Yeah, I just wanna fight  
I just wanna fight_

Are you Home? / Broods [2016]

* * *

Hermione was sitting at the dresser in her bedroom when the phone rang. She was grateful for the distraction having spent the last half an hour trying in vain to perform a charm Mrs Weasley had given her to manage her hair, and she was losing the battle. She jumped from the chair at the continuous ring and had to navigate the scattered objects all over the thick carpet. Despite Hermione being obsessively organised in most areas of her life, the same meticulousness did not carry into her home. It took a few moments to locate the demanding noise, eventually finding the phone under a jumper she had carelessly discarded the day before.

“You're never going to guess what happened to me last night.”

Ginny’s voice hailed through after she clicked to accept the call. Hermione rolled her eyes at the wicked excitement in her friend's voice. Ginny had been on something of a mission since her break up with Harry, not that Hermione judged her, her friend had poured her whole self into that relationship for nearly three years, and now it was over Ginny just wanted to have fun. She was happier than ever, they both were, and that was all Hermione cared about.

“Well, Lavender and I went out, and you will never believe who we saw!” Ginny continued without waiting for Hermione’s prompt. Hermione smiled at her eagerness, happy with herself that there was almost no reaction to the other girl's name now. Her friends blossoming friendship with Lavender Brown had concerned Hermione at first, it was no secret that she had never gotten on with the blonde at school. But while Ginny and Harry had been together so were Lavender and Ron, and the four of them were thrown together a lot. Now, even though they were both single, they continued to spend time together. Hermione could concede that Lavender had grown up, at least a little.

“Who?” Hermione asked absentmindedly as she twirled the phone cord around her fingers, plonking herself back in front of the dressing table and balancing her feet on the edge.

“Marcus Flint!” Ginny cried, with the tone of someone who had just put down a full house during a tense poker match. “Bet you would _never_ have guessed that would you?”

Hermione’s throat closed up, and she shut her eyes, grateful beyond belief that this conversation was happening over the phone. “Really?” she forced out. “How... funny that you should run into him.”

Ginny was too excited to acknowledge or even register the way Hermione’s words fell out of her mouth like leaden pellets. “You know what he was like when we were at school? How he looked at us like we were something under his boot? Well, not anymore!”

“Not anymore,” Hermione parroted back apathetically. She clutched the phone in a death grip as a fur-like feeling seemed to coat her tongue, her fingers twitched as she debated her next step. Arguing with herself was futile, she knew she would have to ask. “What…” she coughed, “what happened?”

“Well, by the time I’d seen him I’d had a few drinks you see, and I marched over there to set him straight. We’d had more than one run in on the Quidditch pitch at school, and we are down to play in the league next year. I thought it was time to settle an old score. So I went over there, eyes blazing, then he offers to buy me a drink, totally took me by surprise…”

Hermione stopped listening, no, that wasn't entirely accurate, she heard the words, but she had finished processing. It was like being on a rollercoaster you know you're afraid, and you’ve been brave the whole way around the ridiculously long queue, and suddenly you're strapped in, and the little cart is chugging all the way to the top of this ridiculous peak and you're sure you are going to die and then… the track seems to fall away, and you brace yourself begging it to stop but knowing you have to see it out until the end of the rotation.

Once Ginny made it to the part where they got back to her flat Hermione’s fingers were trembling too hard to hold the phone without rattling it, so she rested it against her collar as she stared up at the ceiling trying to control her breathing.

“That's great Gin,” she managed to say mechanically as her friend finished speaking. She bit her lip, “Will you... err... do you think you will see him again?”

“Not sure, no firm plans anyway,” Ginny answered as if she had not thought of the possibility herself. Hermione nodded, not that she could be seen, she had gone way past the point of being coherent. “Anyway,” Ginny called excitedly, “I better go.”

Hermione heard the call click off and she laid the phone in the middle of her crossed legs, staring at it like an unidentified bag in a train station. Hermione had got with Marcus a year before, not that anyone knew. Only their kind of getting together hadn’t been a steamy night like he had just shared with her friend; it was a relationship; it meant something. Or so Hermione had thought.

They had to keep it secret Marcus had said, a position that he had never moved from. When they talked they agreed that their friends wouldn't understand, he said he had no interest in answering to the _Chosen One_ , said that was all it was, and like a fool, Hermione had believed him.

It had started out casual, meeting every few weeks when he was back from tours, going out for dirty martinis in Muggle hotels and leaving dirty sheets in the morning. It wasn’t long before it changed, he started coming back more often, turning up in the middle of trips, staying at her place, inviting her to come to his. Making places for each other in their lives, so she had thought. Hermione had never felt like that about anyone before.

Ron and Harry were her two closest male friends, and they were the classic Gryffindors, what you saw was what you got. Marcus was so different, she could have been cliche and said he had ‘layers’, but he didn't, not really, it was more cut and dry than that. Marcus had a public persona, a smirking, scowling brute on the Quidditch pitch, a man that had grown into his appearance that excluded an ‘I don’t give a fuck about you’ attitude at all times. Then he had the person he was underneath, not some gooey sentimental but a slightly softer, goofier man who, like all of them, had been forced to grow up to young and had a secret passion for sugary cereal and Muggle cartoons.

It felt nice finding out what Marcus was like behind the wall he created; he laughed a lot when they were on their own. Not full belly laughs, given over to abandon, but little choking ones that sounded like she had wrenched the noise from his throat against his will.

He felt like hers when he was like that, stripped to the waist in some tatty sweats reenacting some Quidditch move as he knew how his casual references to broken bones made her wince. She felt like his, how he picked her up if she had fallen asleep somewhere and tucked her into bed with him, whispering how he wished she would come on tour with him when he thought she couldn’t hear.

And that's why she had ignored the first call.

And the second.

Even the third time when it was pushed into her face during dinner at the Burrow. Hermione had sat motionless as Ron recounted a fairly explicit story of walking on Marcus and Parvati at one of the end of season parties, all while Molly’s back was turned, of course.

She had said nothing.

But this was different; Ginny was her best friend. She wanted so much to ignore it but she just… she couldn’t. She picked up the phone, staring at it for a moment and taking a huge inhale. It answered on the first ring. “So are you home tonight?”

* * *

His fingers trailed along her arm as she moved inside his elegantly decorated flat, it was exactly like him, all too big furniture and clean lines till you moved into the bedroom, there was colour there and soft plush furnishings, that room was for comfort not display. In none of the stories had Hermione heard of someone being taken back to _his_ flat. It didn't mean it hadn't happened of course, but she took some comfort from that, no matter how pathetic it made her feel.

Hermione walked around him, pushing down her feelings as she brushed against his side. Marcus turned to close the door, dressed casually he still looked breathtaking, and she averted her eyes. She hadn't bothered to put any makeup on or do her hair. She had thought about it, thought about doing a turn like one of those old school movie sirens, charging in dressing to the nines and making him regret the day he lost her.

It was a nice thought, something for the future maybe. But considering she had been sweeping up shards of her broken heart under the carpet for weeks, Hermione was a bit beyond lipstick and eyeliner.

Instead, she had jumped up as soon as their short call ended picking up a pair of shoes and pausing for just two seconds before scooping up the discarded jumper and putting it on. His jumper, she realised when she got to the apparition point. Hermione wasn't sure if she had done that one purpose, maybe her subconscious had wanted to give Marcus some reminder that there was _something more_ between them or maybe it was because it gave her a twisted sort of comfort.

“I need to speak to you,” she said, entirely pointlessly as she had said as much on the phone.

Marcus looked at her openly, no hint of worry on his face. “Drink?” he asked moving towards the kitchen, but she didn't give him an answer, she couldn't, if she let herself derail even slightly she would give in, try to pretend again.

“Anything you want to tell me?” Hermione asked bravely, making herself stand with her back straight and her shoulders back, even though she fiddled with the collar of the jumper.

He stopped then, and when he turned back, he looked neutral, but she could see how his shoulders had stiffened. It was enough to feel like she had got him on the ropes. She stepped forward, further invading his personal space; Marcus towered over her, but at this moment she knew she was more intimidating despite her size. He didn't move back, but he crossed his arms over his torso, and her eyes narrowed. _Guilty_ her mind screamed.

“What are you talking about?” Marcus tried, and she snorted. “Have you been drinking?”

“Ginny,” she whispered, and he stopped dead, the rest of his words evaporating on his tongue.

“Hermione... I…”

“Ginny, Cho and Parvati,” she said. “And those are just the ones I know about.”

Impressed her voice had remained calm, Hermione pulled off the jumper she was wearing, trying to ignore what the static would have done to her hair and handed it back. Marcus’ fingers reached forward to grip hers, but she pulled away.

When she had been on the way over, she had thought about this moment, thought about all the things she wanted to scream at him. But now she was there she felt too sore like her entire being was bruised.

She didn't want to fight.

They stood in silence for a time, and Hermione wanted to leave, flee and never look back but for the same reason she had held her phone to her ear the entire way through the stories of his infidelities she stood in front of him and worked up the courage to ask what she needed to. She knew herself; she may not want to know, but she would need to be able to close the chapter to be able to forget him.

“Why?” she asked eventually, and his huge sigh made her wish they were sitting down.

Marcus didn't look at her when he started speaking; his eyes were fixed on the jumper she had pushed at him. “It… I like you Hermione, a lot, probably more than I have ever liked anyone, you fit with me, we just fit. But…”

“But?” she prompted, praying to Merlin over and over in her head not to cry, she would do almost anything to get through this dry-eyed.

“But,” he said, rubbing one large hand against his stubbly jaw. “I like being wanted too, I thought it would go away, and for a little while it did but when it came back I just… I just.... well, I caved.”

Hermione nodded. “I thought it would be something like that. Honestly, I have imagined all kinds of ridiculous situations, but I think I knew it was just something like that.”

Marcus didn’t respond; he looked fixedly at a point somewhere over her head, and Hermione nervously rubbed at her wrist.

When his words settled in, Hermione felt some resolve, the banality of his excuse spurring her into a quiet action. Sure there would be days to come when she would want to confine herself to bed, cry that she simply hadn't been enough, but somehow she also knew that she would come out of the other side.

It wasn’t meant to be.

“Goodbye Marcus,” she said falteringly before charging towards the door and letting herself out.

He didn’t follow.


	15. SIDE B: TRACK 5 Escape (The Piña Colada Song)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This one is a return to the Pictures of You AU, specifically to a mention made in the epilogue that the girls were going to have a night out with a friend of Fleur's that had just broken up with her wizard.

**SIDE B - TRACK 5**

Pictures of You Universe [Antonin Dolohov x Hermione Granger]

_If you like Piña Coladas, getting caught in the rain_   
_If you're not into yoga, if you have half a brain_   
_If you like making love at midnight in the dunes on the cape  
I'm the love that you've looked for write to me and escape_

Escape (The Piña Colada Song) / Rupert Holmes [1979]

* * *

Antonin sighed as they reached the apparition point, pausing to drop his bag to the floor he leant against the wall. As the rest of his party shuffled up behind him, he narrowed his eyes at the group in front, silently urging them to get on with it. Antonin knew he _should_ feel bad about cutting their ‘boys trip’ short but he couldn’t. It wasn’t that it hadn’t been enjoyable, he certainly hadn't missed the disapproving gazes of the general public, and the biking had been fun. But in truth ever since Luna had _intentionally_ dropped the bombshell that she and Hermione were going on a ‘girls night out’ in Muggle London, Antonin had been on edge. He would have felt worse about his flair of possessiveness if it wasn't entirely clear that Rabastan was in the same boat. The younger of the Lestrange brothers had been surlier than ever over the last twenty-four hours, and even Yax had stopped prodding him over what his wife might get up to, for fear of being pushed off the mountainside, as he had been threatened, twice.

Antonin _abhorred_ the thought of his wife out. Unwittingly his mind supplied an overlaying image of men all over her, but it was more than just his considerable jealousy bothering him. Since the war, and her very public campaign to get them out of prison, her social circle had diminished markedly, there were still a lot of people that refused to acknowledge her, another group that wished her harm, and so Hermione didn't go out much anymore. The world wasn't always a safe place.

When he had been wasting away in Azkaban, the knowledge that he was unable to protect her from the tarnish of their association had repeatedly tapped on the taut string that was his sanity. He had sworn to himself that once he had gotten out, he would never go through the same thing again.

Antonin had suggested that just the pair of agitated husbands make their way back to London a day early, but when he had begun packing everyone announced their intention to come along also. Yax said it was so he had a ‘front row seat’ when Hermione ‘lost her mind’, but Antonin didn't entirely believe him. His friend, despite his almost constant piss taking, was as close to the girls as anyone, Antonin knew Reuben was no happier than he was about them being out without anyone in the country, should they be needed. Severus had sighed and complained, calling them thick headed and reminding them of the witch’s ability to look after themselves, and yet he packed his things along with the rest.

So it was five bad-tempered wizards that arrived at the apparition point, bags in tow, ready to get back home and go out into town.

* * *

After hastily dropping their belongings back at their respective manors the group arrived at the first location, the bar that Hermione had told him, albeit reluctantly, that they would be starting their night in. It had been a long time since Antonin had been in a drinking establishment like the one they found, the pounding music and writhing bodies on the dancefloor were like nails across a chalkboard to his already frayed nerves.

With the five of them separating it didn't take long to establish that the girls were no longer there, and registering the series of head shakes Antonin headed to the bar to see what he could gain from the barman. He wasn’t stupid, a group of young women that looked like they did were going to be noticed. Antonin started off asking his questions politely, well as polite as he ever was, though the barman seemed reluctant to give them any information. When he heard the fourth vague answer, he considered being a little less friendly but was saved the job by Rabastan jumping up and clearing the bar in one smooth movement, the fast act silencing the air around them for a moment and suddenly the man in front of him was a lot more helpful. They hadn't even needed to resort to magic.

By the time they hit the third bar Antonin was losing the tenuous grip he had on his patience. When he described his wife to the last bartender, and the man’s face suddenly became wistful, he felt his fists clench, as the boy recounted what she had been wearing with a subtle leer Antonin had to push himself to remember the threat of Azkaban not to throw the Muggle back into the glass shelving behind him. Settling instead to punching the surface of the bar, Antonin headed for the door; he needed to stand outside for a moment to calm himself before they went to the last place. A rough hand gripped his shoulder, and he looked up into Dolph’s face. “She’s going to be okay Antonin, you know she would have contacted one of us if something was wrong.”

Antonin nodded once, not admitting that he knew that already. Hermione’s safety, for once, was not at the forefront of his mind. Considering the smirk on Reuben’s face, his friend knew exactly why he was feeling murderous. Yaxley hung back to walk alongside him as they continued.

“Leather skirt?” he teased, “naughty girl.”

Antonin huffed, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Fuck, I need to find her then get a drink.”

Reuben laughed, shaking his shoulder. “Come on old man. I’m going to need you with it when we get in there, Rab’s about to blow his top. Did you hear that feckless kid ask about the one that wasn’t wearing a bra? He said she looked like a water nymph.”

* * *

When they walked into the last bar, O’Malley’s, Antonin knew she was there; he could sense her. The place was grimier than the previous place; it seemed their night out had followed the pattern of most, environment paying less and less important as the drinks caught up. The room was dark and lined with chairs all pointing towards a small stage illuminated a bright spotlight, almost the only light in the whole place. He couldn't think over the tremendous din, and he looked towards the source.

_“'If you like Piña Coladas, getting caught in the rain!”_

Well, his wife was definitely there, up in lights.  

_“If you're not into yoga, if you have half a brain…”_

Wrapped around Luna, Fleur and another girl he didn't recognise in a way that made it difficult to assess which one was holding the others up.

_"If you like making love at midnight in the dunes on the cape.”_

Her makeup was smudged, and her hair was bigger than ever, a huge sloppy smile on her face as she giggled through the words.

_“I'm the love that you've looked for write to me and escape.”_

She couldn’t sing if her life depended on it, and against his better judgement, Antonin couldn't help but smile at them. Not that anyone could see in the darkness, it was quite funny. He had seen his wife drunk a fair few times, not that she drank regularly but whenever she did she was only ever a couple of glasses away from totally hammered, she had never been able to hold her booze. Part of it wasn't even her fault, she was tiny, and the stuff him and Yax kept at the manor was typically pretty potent. His eyes softened as she swayed along to the music, her hips much more able to stick to the beat than her voice was. But Hermione was far from the only one in a state of disarray.

Antonin was sure he had never seen Fleur look anything but completely put together so to watch her dragging on a straw inside an empty cocktail glass with confusion written all over her face was hilarious. Luna was indeed braless; a fact that no one in the room was ignorant to given the light positioned right on the stumbling witches on the stage. He didn’t look over at Rabastan though he was pretty sure he could hear the grinding of his teeth, even over the strangled noise that was coming from the girls.

Hermione twisted a little, stumbling on her heels and they nearly all toppled over like dominos. Yax came up to stand beside him, beaming wider than Antonin could remember seeing before. “I am _so_ glad we came back.”

Not everyone was so enthused.

“Merlin, this is insufferable,” Severus spat. “You have found them, they're not in danger, they’re just making fools of themselves. I’m going home.”

Yaxley smiled at him. “Come on Snape you miserable fuck, where’s your sense of humour?”

Snape scowled at him. “At home, with _my witch_ , who is no doubt up to something a bit more _dignified_ than caterwauling in front of a group of unwashed...”

“Er, Snape…” Antonin interjected.

“...cretins, who wouldn't know _good_ music if it came up and bit them on them on the…”

“Severus!”

“What?”

“That your _dignified_ witch over there?” Yaxley asked pointing over to the far corner of the room.

Following the direction of Reuben’s arm, Antonin saw Astrid walking out of the bathrooms. She stood tall, straightening her back as her hands fumbled to pull at her rather short skirt, tottering slightly she bumped into a table as she made her way back towards the stage, stopping to make her heartfelt apologies to the inanimate object.

“A… Astrid?” Severus whispered, staring over at the witch (who on closer inspection had a series of cocktail umbrellas in her hair) with confusion.

Antonin watched on as Astrid’s reemergence was greeted by the cluster of witches on the stage with screams as if she had just come back from battle and not a trip to the bathroom. The singing continued, the girls were oblivious to their new observers, or to anyone else in the room it seemed.

* * *

“Hermione!”

At the sudden shout, Hermione dragged her eyes away from the bright screen displaying the lyrics for Club Tropicana and looked at Luna who was tugging on her arm. “What?”

Luna smiled at her and pointed to the back of the room. Hermione’s eyes followed to find their audience had increased a little since she had last looked. Antonin was stood in the middle; arms crossed over his torso, his expression dark. In spite of his look, she was utterly elated to see him, Hermione had been missing him as the night continued and had been planning on sending a fairly sloppy, owl later. She didn't think of anything else and began to walk forward, totally mindless to the fact she was on an elevated platform. So fixed on getting Antonin she didn't even notice Reuben rush forward to catch her as she walked straight off the end of the stage like a cartoon coyote.

“Easy there,” he said as he grabbed her, placing her slightly doe-like legs onto the sticky floor.

“Thank you, Reuben,” she singsonged and smiled up at him.

“Yep, definitely drunk” he murmured, and she laughed.

“I’m not that bad” Hermione assured him, entirely unconvincingly as she continued to sip at her fruity drink.

“Really?” he asked with a glint in his eyes, “and just how many of those did you have before you left the house?”

She frowned at him. “How did you know I was drinking before I left?”

“Leather skirt, little duck, not usually your style. I imagine you were talked into it around about the time of your third drink,” he said smugly.

She was saved from having to respond by Antonin appearing next to her, his mouth set into a grim line. Yaxley turned her quickly, so she was facing her husband and slunk off to the bar.

“You found me,” she said brightly.

“Was I supposed to be looking?” he grumped, stepping forward to wrap his arms around her middle and she instantly felt steady.

“You were meant to be on holiday - but I knew you would come back,” she replied as she buried her face against his chest.

Antonin looked down at her searchingly. “Did you trick me, Hermione?”

“No - but I’m not sad to see you either.”

* * *

The irritation of the evening and the memories of exuberant bar staff melted away as Hermione gazed up at him adoringly, though Antonin’s expression probably told a different story. She rested back against his chest, and he gripped her again to pull her away from the now abandoned stage. Luna was now sat on Rabastan lap, her back to the room, no doubt by intention, and they were fighting over drinks that she kept picking up only to have Rab banish them.

Reuben was laughing at an exuberant Fleur, whose accent was even more pronounced considering the amount of drink she had, and Severus was battling the incredibly amorous attentions of Astrid, who despite the dark man’s reluctance didn't look like she was perturbed.

“This place is not where I would have wanted you to come.”

“We have a history of meeting in less than pleasant locations Antonin” Hermione replied cheekily.

He smiled at her, a small quirk of the lips that betrayed how endearing he found her like this. He would yell at her for hours tomorrow for being so drunk while out in a series of seedy bars, but right now she looked so amazing, smelt so much like home, and he had missed her.

Locked in his thoughts he almost missed Hermione pulling away from him slightly to run her eyes over his form. He smirked at her, and she didn't even notice. She was never normally so… _overt_ in her appraisal. She would still get embarrassed if he ever caught her looking when he got out of a shower or was changing for bed, as if his body wasn’t hers. He just about managed to suppress a groan when her teeth settled into her bottom lip

“All the same, I think it might be time to go home,” he said finally.

“Noooo,” she replied, pulling on his fingers. “Come on, let's stay. You can even sing one.”

“Hermione,” he said shortly.

“Please?” she begged.

“Home,” he commanded.

“Please, please, please? I would give my life savings to see all of you do a rendition of Back in Black,” she giggled and dropped her hands to hold her chest as she became overcome with laughter. Antonin looked on confused as she stumbled back, nearly falling over. Somehow she had lost a shoe.

He sighed and stepped forward, scooping her off the floor and pressing her against his chest. He turned to announce his departure, but it seemed he had been beaten to it. Luna was over Rabastan's shoulder, her arms hanging down loosely as she sang to herself alternately whacking the backs of Rab’s legs and his arse. Severus was trying to corral Astrid towards the door as she continued to press up against him like a limpet and attacked his neck. The man looked a little flushed and coughed as he walked past the others.

“Shows over,” he muttered curtly.

Antonin _finally_ got Hermione out of the bar only to find she was fast asleep as soon as the air hit her face.

“Best. Night. Ever,” Yaxley pronounced as they got to the apparition point, Antonin scoffed, but as he pushed the wild damp curls out of Hermione’s face and pulled his jacket around her sleeping form, he could concede that it wasn’t all bad.


	16. SIDE B: TRACK 6 Never Tear Us Apart

**SIDE B - TRACK 6**

Harry Potter, [Fenrir Greyback x Hermione Granger]

_Don't ask me_   
_What you know is true_   
_Don't have to tell you  
I love your precious heart_

Never Tear Us Apart / INXS [1987]

* * *

Harry chanced another glance at Hermione and what he saw made his dirty hands clench on the tops of his knees. The sight was no different than it had been when he had last looked, but preparedness provided him with no comfort. They had been there for hours, and there was still no sign of any significant improvement. Taking a deep breath, Harry twisted his head again, this time to glance over a Ron. His friend had pressed himself against the wall so hard he must have been causing himself pain, not that any emotion registered on his face. Ron had kept his eyes trained on the floor since they were shown into the room as if his too long hair could mask his emotions. It was a foolhardy effort; everyone in the room knew his heart was breaking.

Another pain filled sob slashed through the quiet space; the sound was dragged from the broken girl prostrate on the bed in the centre of them all. Harry felt his heart clench as he dropped his head into his hands. It wasn’t supposed to have gone like this, and it was all his fault. It was his arrogance, his recklessness that had led to this moment. If he had never said the taboo, they would never have been caught, and if they had never been found, they would never have been at the manor. They would have been safe, or as safe as they could be at present. In any case, Hermione would never have been tortured.

To block out the suffering in front of him, and the weight in his chest, Harry focused on the events that had led them here. So much of the last few hours hadn’t made any sense; he hadn’t picked up on it at the time, the blood had been rushing too loudly in his ears after all of the running. His eyes darted again, but this time Harry fixated on a single strand of Hermione’s messy curls, he wondered at how it looked so much darker than usual against the stark white of the pillow, and he told himself he wasn’t avoiding her blank face.

He remembered standing in the woods with panic settling into his bone marrow. Ron had looked almost green as they stumbled over each other, both of them trying to block the other from what was coming, but Hermione, she had seemed… Harry squeezed his eyes shut trying to picture her face, _confident_ , his mind supplied, and Harry realised the assessment was right. Hermione had stood with her head high and her shoulders thrown back at least until _all_ of the snatchers had arrived. Then he had noticed a change. Hermione’s eyes had darted around the assembled braying men more than once, almost desperately once Scabior had started to show her a bit of interest. Harry supposed he could understand that facing seven people that only assessed the worth of your life in terms of the galleons currently placed on your head was hardly a time for calm, but there was something else. He had the strangest notion that she had been looking for _someone_ , someone who was evidently not there.

Shaking away his thoughts, Harry methodically worked the flannel Fleur had given him over his fingers; it felt like a lifetime since he had touched anything as pleasantly warm as the light grey cloth. He had ignored her offer at first, determined not to take any comfort until Hermione was conscious again, but Fleur had been insistent. Harry had eventually sagged in agreement and extended his hand in acceptance. He wasn’t capable of speech. His friend, the closest thing he had to family, was writhing in pain in one of the whitewashed bedrooms at the back of Shell Cottage, and nothing seemed to help.

Hermione had lost consciousness almost as soon as Harry’s feet had made contact with the rough sand. True to form she had held on until she was sure everyone else was safe, breathing out a raspy sigh as she regarded the clear, pale blue sky, and then nothing. It had been too close to goodbye for Harry’s sanity, the pull of her lips was too near to the expression on Sirius’ face as he drifted back through the deathly whispers of the veil. He knew he had screamed just as hard, but he had no idea now what he had said.

Bill had carried Hermione up the stairs, the redhead’s apparent ease making Harry realise just how light she must have been. Their starvation had been so gradual he hadn’t noticed it himself. They had placed her in the bed she now laid in and Fleur had done all she could, and it was a damn sight more so than he or Ron would have been able, but nothing seemed to make any difference.

After the first hour passed in nervous silence, Ron had murmured that his mother should be called, his words coming out as heavy, water-clogged sobs, but Bill had wearily shaken his head, there was nothing more Mrs Weasley could have done for Hermione. Harry hadn’t argued, he knew what Bill was saying was the truth, though he couldn’t help but feel they could have all benefited from her presence. Molly might not have been able to cast any _more_ charms than Fleur had, but the matriarch was too stubborn to allow Hermione to slip away on her watch, and that in itself was a kind of magic.

Harry cast the flannel aside and pushed himself back into the uncomfortable chair he had all but fallen into earlier. Hermione’s pale face was drawn, the dark circles she had been sporting under her eyes for months looked even more prominent in the harsh sunlight streaming in from the windows. There was nothing more for any of them to do now but wait. Remus would be there soon.

There had been hesitation from all of them to call on another member of the Order, converging in significant numbers was foolhardy at this time, but they hadn’t felt there was any other option. Ron had looked nearly purple when Bill made the suggestion, but he had wisely kept his mouth shut. In the history of their friendship, it was the only thing Harry had ever fallen out with his friend about, and he felt guilty about taking sides, but Hermione had enough to be getting on with, he wouldn't stand for her dealing with Ron’s misplaced rage. As soon as it had been suggested, Harry had been insistent that the surviving Marauder was called for. Bill knew a little about those things, but not enough to be of any assistance in this case. He wouldn’t allow them to run the risk of administering any more radical treatment in case they inadvertently hurt her.

Hermione’s _condition_ was yet another weight on Harry’s already overburdened shoulders. It was his fault after all. There were days when it felt like everything was, like everything he touched turned rotten, especially back then. Looking back Harry chastised himself for spending too much of his young life wallowing in self-pity, it had made him complacent, always believing that _he_ would be the target. He hadn’t worried enough about plots against those around him, those he relied on.

When Umbridge had sent a Dementor to attack him in the summer after the fourth year, it wasn’t an end to her scheming. While the Order rushed around to get him back into the relative safety of the magical world, their soon to be teacher sent something just as dangerous after Hermione; only his friend hadn’t been quick enough to fight her assailant off. That had been her despondent explanation. Harry had been quick to point out that the creature sent after him had a spell specifically designed to ensure his safety, there was no such thing for her to have employed, even if she had been able to get to her wand in time.

While Harry was summoned to his trial for the prohibited underage use of magic, in defence of his life or otherwise,  Hermione had been hauled up in Grimmauld Place, being looked after by Remus and Sirius, coming to terms with her new way of life. The bite at her neck was only the beginning.

From that moment everything for the curly-haired witch changed. Harry knew now, with the questionable gift of hindsight that himself and Ron had not reacted well. He had been too wrapped up in the attack being his fault to be of any use to her and Ron, well, they had both loved Hermione for a long time, he suspected, though it was never spoken of, that Ron had been _in_ love with her. His anger had been spectacular. They had both cared, but neither of them had focused on what it had done _to_ Hermione. She had mentioned it a few times, late at night when no one else was around. Hermione talked about how her senses were accelerated, how she struggled with her _other self,_ the one that now lingered underneath her skin. Harry’s once-confident friend became withdrawn and muted.

Her _condition_ , as Remus called it, had made Hermione closer to the former Marauders, something that had caused a very unexpected shift in the relationship dynamics inside the dreary house. Up to that point, Harry and Ron had been enthralled by everything about the pair, hanging on their every word and laughing uproariously at their stories and shared jokes. Conversely, Hermione had done everything possible to avoid them. Harry had put it down to her having a crush on Remus, which he had found hilarious, and a slight dislike towards Sirius and his less refined manners. Then, following the bite, she gravitated towards them whenever the trio entered a room, and they, in turn, seemed to welcome her company, including her in their hushed conversations and making protective stances around her whenever other members of the Order visited them.

Over that summer, Harry noticed a particular closeness between Hermione and Remus, which he supposed he should have expected given the bond of adversity they now shared. He had found them together a few times, sitting and talking in the library, or downstairs in the kitchen when the rest of the inhabitants of the old house were asleep. Despite how unobservant everyone seemed to think he was, Harry wasn’t blind, and he had begun to suspect some deeper feelings on both sides. It had unsettled him a little at first until one night when he witnessed an exchange that made him realise that he had been off course.

On a trip to get some water, he had paused at the kitchen door hearing soft murmurings from within. Through the gap he could see that Hermione was crying again, she hadn’t made a sound, but her cheeks were damp as she looked out of the window. Harry had nearly walked into the room, but before he could move, he noticed Remus behind her, comforting her. Their former professor had been running his fingers over the top of her hair in soft, soothing motions. Harry had stalled in the corridor and studied the man’s face, Remus’ expression looking something similar to how Molly, or even Sirius, looked at him, he knew then that while he had been correct about the _deeper_ feelings, they were rooted in a parental, not romantic way.  

Though he had been reassured about the _nature_ of their relationship it had still irritated Harry, something he was now ashamed of. He hadn’t realised how much he had come to rely on Hermione being such an unwavering friend, someone that was always around to listen to him, someone that always sought his advice, not until he had to share her.

Remus was the only one Hermione discussed the attack with, she didn’t ignore the subject, she couldn’t, but with the rest of them she only ever gave broad stroke details. It had hurt Harry’s protective instincts, and he had thought about approaching Sirius several times to inquire what he knew, that was until Moody, in his typically blunt fashion, demanded in harsh tones that their ex-professor tell them all of the details during dinner one evening. Remus refused vehemently, his words and stance rigid in a show of anger Harry had never seen from him before. After that Harry kept his questions to himself, though he couldn't help but think that they were both hiding something from him, from everyone.

Months passed, and the shock of the initial attack wore off, yet Hermione kept the haunted look in her eyes. A nervousness settled over her that had never been there before. She was ever watchful as if she was waiting for something or someone.

Harry was pulled from his reflections by a resounding crash from the ground floor of the small cottage. In an instant, they were all on their feet, but their defensive stances relaxed as soon as they heard Remus swearing. Harry was inclined to believe that the professor’s wife’s habitual clumsiness was rubbing off on the man, but then he remembered the rush in which they had come up the stairs, there was likely an overturned chair or something blocking the floo.

Not a minute later Remus entered the sparse bedroom and barely pausing he dropped a heavy hand on Harry’s shoulder as he approached the bed. Harry studied the man’s face as he almost dragged his eyes to Hermione, he both looked like every second of the glance hurt him, as well as being trapped in it, unable to look away.  

Remus lowered himself to sit on the side of the bed as Fleur listed out everything they had tried in a series of broken whispers. Her distress wasn’t lost on Harry; it was no secret that she had liked Hermione. During the Triwizard tournament, she had found his friend’s mix of formal support and friendlessness to the other champions amusing, and when Bill had taken fleur home, Hermione had become an unlikely ally. But there was something else, Harry was sure of it. Since they had gotten back to the cottage Fleur had routinely come to rest her eyes on Hermione’s bite; there was a sadness in her expression that he didn't understand.  

After nodding along to Fleur’s update, Remus checked Hermione over himself, though whether to confirm what she had said or to look for further clues was unclear, he said nothing. His inspection, apart from the gentle cataloguing of marks on her body, included an awful lot of smelling. Ron’s own nostrils flared in response, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Harry himself felt decidedly uncomfortable like he was intruding on something that should have remained private, but he stayed, and he waited.

For a while, nothing could be heard in the room apart from the creaking of the bed as Remus moved and Hermione’s laboured breathing. Harry stared at the back of Remus’ head, no longer capable of tracking the time that passed though his eyes remained dead ahead. He was directly facing him when Remus eventually turned around, his expression drawn and sallow.  

“Harry I know how to fix this, _fix her_ , but you are going to have to trust me.”

Harry nodded eagerly, holding back his snap that they _needed to get on with it_ , his chest was so filled with new hope at the man’s certainty that he couldn’t have cared less why he would have been at all hesitant. He barely noticed the heavy look between Remus and Bill, though he saw the oldest Weasley look grim for a moment before he walked away. Fleur left a few minutes after and Harry thought he could hear a sharply whispered conversation outside of the door, but he could have been mistaken.

None of those left in the diminished bedside vigil made any attempt to speak; there didn't seem to be much point. Harry couldn't share anything about the mission with Remus and that, and the girl in the bed was all that mattered now. He didn't want to think about how they were probably doomed to failure; without Hermione, he wasn’t sure what to try next.

Scratching the side of his head, Harry tried to think of anything that might help, and then he remembered _the phial_. He stood up quickly, drawing the eyes of those capable of looking as he roughly searched through his trouser pockets, front and back, his fingers finally coming into contact with cold glass.

“She needs to take her Wolfsbane,” he said, holding the liquid aloft. Harry felt a sense of loss in handing it over, something he knew Hermione would have laughed at, he had never told her that it meant so much more than he had ever been able to explain.

All that time in the cramped, musty tent had brought all of their grievances, old and new, to the surface. Living in those conditions without the locket would have been tough, with it every minor infraction that had ever existed between the three friends was remembered and magnified until it became an insurmountable obstacle. Harry had found himself, almost against his own volition, confronting Hermione about her silence over her attack, he had raved and yelled until tears misted in her eyes, and he felt sick to his stomach.

When the argument ended, they had collapsed against each other, him panting, her thoughtful. “Why is it making it so bad?” he had asked, looking at the locket that was, for a blessed moment at least, resting on the shabby table.

“Because we love each other,” Hermione had replied, she had laughed when he stilled. “Not like that.”

She had given him the phials after that. Hermione, the consummate planner that she was, had brewed enough to keep her going through the hunt, well, at least for however long she had assumed it would take. Harry had asked her once what would happen if she ran out, she had responded, in her own typically matter of fact way that if it lasted till that time her transformation once a month would be the least of their worries.

Hermione had handed over her stash of phials without comment, but Harry had known her intention, she was even worse at hiding her emotions than he was. She had done it to make him feel important, to remind him that he was needed. Harry had wanted to protest, but he hadn’t because Hermione had stayed. Hermione had _always_ stayed. So he pocketed them and gave her a lopsided grin.

Harry leant forward extending the phial to Remus’ outstretched fingers, but before the other man could safely grab the potion, the door swung open and as Harry turned to look the glass was wrenched from his hand by invisible fingers.

For a moment everything was madness. Where there had been quiet, shouts and calls were reverberating off the walls. Ron reacted far quicker than Harry, his anger closer to the surface despite his shock, though no one was as prepared as the man in the doorway.

Fenrir Greyback stood with his wand still extended from where he had jolted the potion, and Harry leapt to his feet, standing next to Ron, putting themselves between him and Hermione. When faced with yet another new threat it took him a lifetime to realise that in all of the chaos Remus hadn’t moved, and Bill was now back in the room pressed into the corner.

With no thought for strategy or survival, Ron charged forward, but he barely got an accusatory word out of his mouth before he was thrown to the side, as if he was no more than a minor irritant, in fact, the savage wolf barely even looked in their direction. His attention was on the bed as he walked towards the centre of the room hardly pausing to allow Remus to move out of the way before he dropped to the floor, hard, his knees vibrating the wooden floorboards as he leant up and pressed his forehead against Hermione’s.

“How long has she been like this?” Greyback growled.

His words were directed at Remus, and despite the professor’s obvious lingering fear, he clenched his teeth in irritation. “A while.”

Fenrir looked as if he would say something else but Hermione made a whimpering sound, and he immediately diverted his attention back to the bed, sitting on the edge and pushing a large hand into her hair.

“Don't touch her,” Harry warned, finally regaining control of his body. He raised his wand as his mind filtered through a list of dark spells, ones he hadn’t even wanted to think about since he had left Draco Malfoy in a pool of his own blood in an abandoned bathroom, but Harry had to do this, he had to protect her.

Greyback spun back around and glared at him, his eyes wide and amber. Harry felt every part of his mind scream at him to cower, to make himself smaller but he forced his shoulders back refusing to take his eyes off the huge man as he barked at Remus. “What is he doing here?”

His former professor suddenly looked a hundred years older, and his eyes filled with regret. “I called him Harry,” he explained in a tone of total resignation.

“Why would you do that?” Harry yelled, feeling his body stiffen in shock.

“Because… Fenrir is Hermione’s mate.”

The words brought silence to the room once more, and Harry’s mind was reeling. He stilled, falling into the chair behind him as his legs gave out. “What?”

Harry looked at Remus, but the wolf was looking back at the bed where Fenrir was pushing his nose into Hermione’s hair. The wild man looked at her almost… _tenderly_? Harry wasn’t sure if he wanted to claw the flesh away from the wolf’s face before or after he was violently sick.

It was Ron who spoke up; he had got himself off the floor and moved to stand behind Harry. “What in Merlin’s name is going on?”

“Fenrir,” Remus tried, but the only answer he received was a low growl. “They have to know eventually,” he pressed again, “for Hermione.”

Greyback glared at Remus for a long time, but with a clench of his jaw he turned himself around on the bed, just a little, though his eyes never left Hermione and he kept a hand around her wrist. “I was sent by Umbridge that summer, sent to bite, sent to hurt, sent to kill.”

Harry felt shivers run up his spine. Greyback, _they had sent Greyback!_ Hermione had never said, she had insisted she didn’t know her attacker, maybe she hadn't at the time, none of them had seen him until the night Dumbledore had died, at least Harry had thought none of them had.

Greyback leant forward to brush a thumb over Hermione’s pale cheek. “So I went. I found her in a park, nose buried in a book, it was almost too easy, it wasn’t until I got close that I could smell her properly, I knew immediately.” He grinned, a look that was somehow more terrifying than his soft gaze before he pressed his lips to Hermione’s head. The contact was too much, and Harry made to rush forward, but Remus’ expression made him hold his position.

“She wasn’t all that happy about being told she was _mine_ ,” Greyback continued, as he moved his head to the side, dislodging his messy shoulder length hair and intentionally showing off a series of scars on his neck that were made up of tiny crescent moons, _fingernails_. Harry felt the familiar sensation of pride for Hermione coursing through his blood. Unarmed and overwhelmed she had marked the wolf, marked him almost as permanently as he had marked her.

If Greyback noticed Harry’s emotions he didn't acknowledge it, he was tracing his fingers over the hand that was resting against his leg as he made to continue. “It was time for a change of plan. I couldn’t kill her, and I had no intention of leaving her but she refused, and we argued. I didn’t want to hurt her but she tried to leave, and I couldn't allow that.”

“Then what? You left her there to sort herself out, mission complete?” Harry accused bile rising in his throat as he thought about the blood that was still caked on Hermione’s pale skin when she had been found.

Fenrir snarled, a sound that seemed to penetrate the foundations of the house but he didn't’ move, his hand still holding on to Hermione. Harry was left with the very firm impression that if it weren't for the wolf’s intention to keep that connection, he would have already been dead.

“She couldn’t reach for her wand, I had been told she was good, so I had gotten rid of it. I approached her on the ground; the venom was already taking hold, so I made to take her. Only she bit me back.” Greyback held up his hand were teeth marks could be viewed.

“Then why are you here? You did what you had to; you cursed her. Why come now?” Ron spat, his fingers biting into the back of Harry’s chair.

Greyback’s still elevated hand curled into a claw, and he opened his mouth to expose his jagged teeth. “She made me promise I wouldn’t ever hurt either of you two idiots, don’t make me a wolf that has lied to his mate.”

“When?” Harry said suddenly, his mind racing to catch up.

“What?” Greyback grunted.

“When did she ask you? When did you give that promise?”

Greyback didn’t answer, and so Harry looked at Remus his eyes pleading, the man sighed. “There is a lot you need to be told Harry, but it’s not my story to pass on.”

Whatever protest Harry was forming was cut off when Fenrir growled. At first, Harry thought he was attempting to derail the conversation until Harry noticed he had pulled Hermione’s other arm from under the covers and was tracing his furious eyes over the word in her arm. He turned to Remus baring his teeth.

“Bellatrix,” Remus supplied, in a voice that Harry didn’t recognise, it sounded almost as angered as Greyback's howls.

A shuffling in the bed took all of the attention of the room, temporarily pouring water on the mounting tension. Hermione twisted and turned in the bed for a few moments until her eyes flickered open, and she blinked at the ceiling. Harry was on his feet rushing towards her, but Bill came to life just as quickly and gripped him around his torso, holding him back but not pulling him away.

Greyback moved up the bed and cupped Hermione’s chin, pulling it down gently to meet her heavy-lidded gaze. They stared each other for a moment until Hermione tried to speak her words coming out as little more than a rasp.

“What are you doing here?”

Harry started at the familiarity of her voice and was left staring at Hermione like he had never seen her before.

Greyback grinned at her, if that was the right word, the expression was warped by his long canines. “What have I said about asking questions you already know the answer to?”


	17. SIDE B: TRACK 7 My Type

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This slice of silliness was written in honour of Kreeblim Sab's birthday and was initially posted on Tumblr. I have expanded this a little since that version. In this AU there is no Voldemort, as such the Death Eaters do not exist. However, the same group of people are morally grey and have some degree of organisation among them, coming together in covert ways to disrupt the political process to their own ends.

**SIDE B - TRACK 7**

[Hermione Granger, Reuben Yaxley, Antonin Dolohov]

_When there's loving in the air,_   
_Don't fight it just keep breathing._   
_I can't help myself but stare._   
_Double check for double meanings.  
I'm a man who's got very specific taste._

My Type / Saint Motel [2014]

* * *

It was the dull throb in the side of his head that woke Reuben Yaxley, though if it hadn’t been the insistent beating against his temple, it would have been the dryness of his mouth. His eyes opened slowly before instantly shutting again as he released a small groan. The room was far too bright, that and the overpowering smell of cleaning charms could only mean one thing. Some thoughtless twat had decided it was a good idea to bring him to St Mungo’s. Reuben bit down on his irritation and took a few ‘calming breaths’.

Barty had come back from India the year before exalting the mental health benefits of meditation to anyone that would listen. Reuben was decidedly not one of those people. The erratic young man was hardly an advert for the method’s success, what with the very perilously grip with which he held his own mental balance. That said, strictly in private, Reuben had found it useful once or twice. It didn’t stop him from losing his temper, he seriously doubted anything would, but it moderated his reactions, which otherwise would have sometimes been called extreme.

Reuben twisted impatiently against the scratchy cotton under him. At least they had got him into moderately respectable pyjamas on this occasion. The last time he had unknowingly been deposited in the hospital, Reuben had woken up in nothing but a hospital gown. No amount of rhythmic breathing had been enough to stop him from hexing the first healer that walked through the door. He languidly wondered how bad his injuries must have been for the staff to let him in again, there was talk of a lifetime ban, not that such a thing was indeed enforceable, the healer just hadn’t liked the word ‘Arsehole’ being emblazoned on his forehead.

Cautiously Yaxley attempted to shift his torso to test the damage; he had merely moved a fraction when the pain that lanced through his sides nearly made him bite through his bottom lip.  

“Fuuccck!” he groaned loudly into the room, though the raspy nature of his throat muffled the booming curse.

A soft grunt from the side of the too white room registered in the back of his screaming mind and Reuben turned to the side, as quickly as his aching limbs would allow. As his blurring vision slowly focused he could make out Antonin Dolohov sitting rigidly in a small chair. Reuben supposed he should have been comforted, or at least, less angry now that it was evident he hadn't been left here in the care of the moron’s alone. However, the broad grin on Antonin’s face made him momentarily fear that his brain was irretrievably damaged. Antonin rarely smiled, in fact, the last time he had exhibited a level of joy close to what was currently on his face it was because Lucius had been attacked by one of his peacocks. It seemed unlikely that such a perfect moment would have repeated itself.

“Why did you bring me here?” Reuben asked impatiently.

Antonin defensively folded his arms over his chest and regarded the bed with one eyebrow raised in a silent challenge; his expression said ‘ _why do you fucking think?_ ’ But Reuben was in no mood. He supposed their play by play in the little room would have baffled any of the staff had they happened to be there. His waking had hardly been met with any outpouring of emotion from either party, apart from possible irritation. Antonin was his best friend, and while Reuben was sure the man was happy he wasn’t dead there were questions to answer, bringing him here was a risk to many. Their missions had been increasing in boldness of late and had never been anywhere approaching legal in the first place. Healers asked way too many questions for comfort.

“I didn’t have much choice,” Antonin responded in an unnaturally breezily tone, they had known each other too long for the Russian to be put off by the aggressive way Reuben had spoken to him. “You lost too much blood for even Severus to patch you up.”

“I would have been alright,” Yaxley protested ignoring how even he didn’t fully believe his words.

“You've been out cold for two days,” Antonin stated dispassionately, and Reuben stilled before loudly swearing as he felt a soft spot in his ribs and sagged into the covers.

“Well, if I’m in here, and in this state, why are you smiling?”

“Me?” Antonin asked, shuffling in his seat a little uncomfortably. “No reason.”

Yaxley’s eyes narrowed as Antonin made a production of examining his fingernails, and Reuben waited. When they lulled into silence, he hid his suspicions and feigned an attempt at smoothing the covers until Antonin’s head fell back a little and Reuben was able to follow his line of sight, somewhat perplexed to see a clock ticking away the seconds until four pm.

He debated asking the stoic man what in the world he was playing at only suddenly there was no time for enquiry as the heavy doors to his room swung open and a small team of healers bustled in led by the oldest wizard Reuben had ever seen.

None of the ‘visitors’ paid them any heed at all, not even to introduce themselves. The ancient man moved around the room, his nose aloft, as he consulted the chart behind the bed. Reuben vaguely noticed that he had two ‘minions’ shuffling behind him, both furiously scratching with quills, only pausing whenever their commander took a laboured breath.

Reuben tried to hold onto his admittedly limited patience, though he could feel it dangerously fraying when the second round of agreeing ‘mmms’ and ‘ahhhs’ broke out in a five minute period. He had no interest in being any kind of magical pin cushion for these people, especially if they weren’t even going to acknowledge him. He was hardly one to stand on ceremony or to insist on the respect owed by his position in society, but he was used to common civility at the very least, usually more if his reputation for being an awkward prick had preceded him. Reuben made his best effort to turn to the side, determined to pay the little bunch of clucking hens even less heed than they had him, that was until he noticed Antonin.

Yaxley dropped his head back down to the pillows, giving up on trying to hold himself half up and instantly got a better view of Antonin’s face. His oldest friend was captivated, his unusual fidgeting from minutes before had stilled completely, and his gaze was intense.

Yaxley made some pretence of getting more comfortable and once more, followed his friend's gaze to land on the witch closest to the bed; he hadn’t looked at her when she had first come in. She was slight and short, and he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her, the relic of a healer must have almost entirely shielded her body.

Suddenly Reuben wished he had paid a little more attention when they had first walked in. He glanced over the well-fitting white robes she was wearing, but there was no stitched in label displaying her name and specialisation, she must have been a trainee, an observation that gave further credence to her probably being as young as she looked. The unnamed witch had curly hair, of the wild variety that seemed like it belonged to another era. It was piled messily on top of her head, and loose tendrils fell down the back of her neck, bouncing slightly as her shoulders shook with the effort of keeping up her furious note-taking.

Reuben unconsciously leaned a little closer, the pain in his side no longer seemed to register with him as he regarded a smudge on the woman’s cheek. It was blue, and about the size of a fingerprint. He glanced down quickly noticing a twin mark on her thumb, curiously feeling comforted that she had left the mark there, given how close it was to her full lips. It discomforted him how hard he had to work to suppress the urge to reach forward and wipe it off.

Once the old healer had apparently exhausted himself, he passed the clipboard he had been studying over to the witch the other two men in the room had been watching and promptly began on another topic, heading towards the door. The other junior staff member was scurrying to keep up with the man’s extraordinary spry steps.

Yaxley used all of the strength he had remaining in his body to pull himself up against the lumpy cushions at his back, and the woman stepped forward.

“Good Afternoon Mr Yaxley,” she greeted brightly with a wide smile, giving him her full attention for the first time since she stepped into the room.

Any reply Reuben would have given was stolen away when Antonin spoke. “Hermione,” he greeted roughly, with a slight nod of his head.

“Antonin,” the young witch, _Hermione_ , returned with a small, shy smile.

Yaxley suppressed a chuckle; he wondered when the man at his side had discovered that the witch’s rounds started at four o'clock and whether he had found out by _strictly_ circumstantial means. Somehow, he doubted it, Antonin could be somewhat… obsessive.

Reuben was disturbed from his thoughts when the witch placed her chart down next to him and rolled back her sleeves, revealing swathes of perfect pale flesh.

“Would you mind if I took your vitals?” she asked, moving to start even before he spoke.

“Yes,” he said decidedly, and her head snapped up.

“I’m sorry,” she asked, confusion written all over her face.

Reuben was momentarily distracted from his goal when her lips pouted slightly. She was adorable and decidedly too good for the likes of them, which made it all the more fun. “I said,” He replied, eyeing her neutrally. “I would mind.”

Her brow crumpled and Yaxley’s desire for mischief softened a little, he sighed inwardly, he could see her better now that she was closer, and she was really quite lovely. He was actually in a lot more pain than he would own to, and nothing would help as much as a distraction, and there was no better distraction than getting under Antonin’s skin.

Bestowing a broad smile at the witch, Reuben tilted his head towards the wizard perched on the uncomfortable looking chair by the window. “I would prefer it if _he_ left the room.”

Antonin glared, and Reuben felt a light feeling in his centre. _Truly the best balm_. “You know me, Antonin,” he said with a heavy hand coming to rest against his chest, “modest to a fault.”  

Hermione took a step back, and Antonin took the opportunity to mouth a few choice phrases in his native tongue in the direction of the bed.

“I’m sorry Antonin,” Hermione said, looking at the Russian compassionately. “If Mr Yaxley would prefer this to be done in private I will have to ask you to leave.”

“But-” Dolohov made to protest, but Hermione cut him off.

“-I understand your concern for your friend, but I assure you he is in excellent hands.”

“And what lovely hands they are,” Reuben muttered under his breath.

Antonin, clearly sensing a temporary defeat stalked from the room, but not before accidentally _on purpose_ nudging the end of the bed, hard, causing Reuben to swallow an oath.

Reuben allowed himself a smirk as the doors to his room swung closed and with a quick brush against his jaw to assess the state of his stubble he acted quickly, pushing his hands under the covers to find the hem he needed to begin pulling his shirt off, only to be interrupted by a flustered trainee healer.

“Mr Yaxley,” she began with pink cheeks, “you don’t need to remove any clothing for the exam.” He ignored her. “It doesn’t make any difference,” she pressed, averting her eyes.

Reuben paused his movements, with one arm out of the long white sleeve someone had placed him in, he momentarily wondered if it was her. “You’ve tested it?” he asked, his eyes coming to rest on her uncomfortable face.

The witch puffed up for a minute, clearly ready to answer any questions a patient would have until her head cocked to the side and she deflated. “Well, no.”

“So, you don’t know if it might help?”

She grit her teeth and Reuben fought back a smirk before returning to complete his action, enjoying greatly how the gentle dusting of pink on her cheeks darkened. In the process, he also got the first good look at his side, which was a decidedly less attractive array of colours than the healer’s face. He was going to murder Selwyn when he got out of there, that batch of explosives was far too volatile to have been rushed around with, and Ade had told him they were stable enough for him to break into a run.

Beginning to compose herself, the witch walked forward and began to move her wand over his chest occasionally pausing to jot something down. The concentration on her face looked calmer than the pinched looked she had during her aggressive note taking earlier, and Yaxley found he forgot about the irritated Russian, no doubt directly on the other side of the door, and began to watch her hands. Her presence was strangely comforting, and in even if she hadn’t been anywhere near as beautiful she would still have been a vast improvement on being treated by a reluctant Severus the morning after.

“Mr Yaxley,” she said at last, and Reuben suppressed his reaction to the nature of her address, especially her incredibly polite tone, realising that he was stuck between a hospital bed and an increasingly hard place. He wondered if he would prefer her to continue addressing him like that, he quite enjoyed the formality, it implied a level of submissiveness that the glimmer in her eyes told him was erroneous, but, on the other hand, he found he also wanted to hear his name coming from her lips.

“Reuben,” he said finally.

“I’m sorry?” she enquired, looking up from her notes.

“My _name_ is Reuben,” he clarified in a low, commanding tone. She blushed again.

“Thank you, Reuben,” she replied in a slightly strangled voice. “I’m Healer Granger.”

“You wound me, Miss Granger,” he declared with mock affront though he was internally congratulating himself on still having enough of a way with women to still be able to affect someone as young and beautiful as she was. ‘ _Manner’s_ ’ his father’s voice chimed in the back of his mind, ‘ _Manners are always important to a lady, such a small thing, and yet so often overlooked_.’

“Might I call you by your first name?” he enquired cordially, and Healer Granger began to twist her quill between her fingers.

“We aren’t supposed to,” she supplied in a whisper and Yaxley looked over to the side of the room where Antonin had been sat.

“My friend-” he began, but he was cut off.

“You are a patient,” she clarified, “there are protocols I have to follow.”

“Well, we wouldn't want to get you in trouble, would we?” he replied silkily, and her posture stiffened slightly.

“I suppose you think I’m an incredibly dull person,” she said primly on an exhale. “You don’t strike me as someone that follows the rules very often.”

Yaxley couldn’t help the somewhat predatory look that crept across his face. “Not at all, _Healer Granger_ , if you get to know me better I think you’ll find I have a _more_ than healthy appreciation for a witch that can follow appropriate rules.”

There was a soft clatter, and Reuben looked down to see the clipboard the witch had been holding so tightly her knuckles had begun to turn white was now on the floor. When she hastily picked it back up, she distractedly pulled on the corner of her skirt, and Reuben smirked until she coughed lightly and then bade that he turned over, which he did, happily.

Hermione ran her wand followed by her cold fingers over his back, checking patches of his skin for sensitivity. When she reached the waistband of his pyjama trousers, the likes of which he hadn’t won since he was probably the girl's age, he had to push his head into the uncomfortable pillow to stop himself from asking her to drift lower still.

Pain in the base of his spine had him wincing; the agony moved his thoughts back to his original purpose. As the witch apologised, in the most pleasurable, agonisingly, gracious way, she applied a cooling charm against his back, and he boomed his voice to the loudest volume he could achieve.

“Oh, _Healer Granger_ , that’s perfect.”

Not even a whole second later Antonin burst back into the room looking like thunder. Reuben smiled to himself; he was going to be out of here in no time. He felt better already.

* * *

The next day, after another night on the unbelievably uncomfortable hospital cot, Reuben managed to wake without feeling irritation eating away at him, though it was a close run thing. After her observations had been completed the day before, under Antonin’s watchful gaze, Hermione had hesitating decreed that he needed to stay in for a few more days. When Reuben made to protest the young witch’s demeanour had hardened instantly, something he had not expected from her incredibly compliant behaviour up to that point. Once Hermione had finally left the room to complete the rest of her rounds, Antonin had started at Yaxley for a full silent minute before he punched him in the arm as hard as he possibly could. Despite the pain, it had only made Reuben grin wider.

As he twisted, he took in the sounds of the hospital leaking in through the double doors and flexed his legs to gauge the healing in his side. At last, he rolled his head languidly to the side only to blink twice when he realised that Theodore Nott was there, occupying the uncomfortable seat by the window. The wizard’s presence had certainly not been required by him, and unless Yaxley was completely mistaken the young heir already had his ‘orders’ for the next few days.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Reuben barked, beyond annoyed to be taken by surprise.

“Civilised as ever I see,” the boy replied with an amused sigh before closing his book with practised grace. “Dolohov sent me,” he clarified, looking at the man in the bed out of the corner of his eye. “I’m supposed to be your _guard dog_ for the day.”

Yaxley looked over at the young man’s chiselled face and dark eyes and allowed himself ten uninterrupted seconds of intense rage before all ill feeling within him subsided so quickly he released a hearty chuckle. _Well played Antonin, you devious fucker._

Reuben considered that he really should have seen this coming. Antonin was hardly one to take a turn of events like yesterday lying down. Had he been any other obstacle he was sure his old friend would have reacted more aggressively, by comparison, this was almost funny. _Almost_.

The Russian could have sent any number of people to sit by his side that day, Reuben, for himself would have probably sent someone likely to irritate and therefore derail his plans for the witch, Antonin had decided to play for someone who might tempt the witch’s interest. Young Theo, Yaxley could begrudgingly admit, was something of a masterstroke. The boy exhibited a lot of the same qualities himself and Antonin had when they were younger and yet there was something about him that stood out all on his own. Nott was sarcastic, smart, cultured and ruthless. Up to this point, Reuben had almost liked him.

Deciding small talk was unnecessary, Yaxley laid onto his back again. He debated ordering Theo to leave the room to get him a passable coffee, but it didn’t seem worth it. He wasn’t sure how much Antonin had told, ergo he couldn't be sure how much he would be showing his hand if he asked the kid to leave. His deliberations didn't last long. Hermione had been right about his lack of energy reserves; however, loathe Reuben was to admit it. Not long after waking he fell back to sleep only to be woken up by the curly-haired witch he had been pondering who had appeared in his room this time without the unwelcome entourage and bestowed a smile on him.

“And how are we today Mr Yaxley?” she asked.

“ _We_ are fine,” he replied shortly, and Hermione turned towards the window.

“Nott,” she greeted almost cautiously.

“Granger,” Theo replied though Yaxley didn’t miss the sweep of the wizard’s eyes over his healer. He knocked his fist against the side of the bed in warning.

Hermione rounded the bed, clipboard in hand and eyed Theo warily. “How are you?”

“I’m very well, _Healer_ Granger,” Theo replied with a soft smirk, sitting further back into his seat. “May I say how wonderful it is to see you today?”

Hermione looked momentarily stunned. “It is?”

“Why certainly,” Theo answered with a broad grin. “Just think, after seven years of seeing you in nothing but a school uniform, the next time I see you, you’re in healing robes. Lucky me.”

“Mr Nott,” Hermione cut in, and Reuben twisted his hands into his bed sheets.

She had started to do that sputtering thing she had done with him only the day before, and Yaxley resolved that the next time his ‘associates’ did anything that had a truly _shit_ component, Theodore Nott would be signing himself right up.

* * *

After a pretty serious talk with Nott, Reuben awoke on the third day of his hospital stay to find that Antonin was back, looking decidedly too happy. The Russian folded his arms over his chest and eyed the man in the bed knowingly. “How long do you intend to stay here for?”

“A few more days she said,” Reuben answered absentmindedly. He didn’t bother stating who he meant, they both knew.

Antonin walked over to the end of the bed and pulled out the notes that had been left there. “When have you ever listened to healers or trainee healers come to that?”

Reuben didn’t dignify the question with a response. True, typically he would have been keener to leave, but he had been severely hurt, there was no harm in making sure he was completely recovered before he left. _Was there?_

At four pm on the dot both their heads turned towards the door only to be greeted by a scrawny looking kid with dark-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose. The unknown, unwelcome, healer grinned widely as he adjusted the light levels in the room and flicked through Reuben’s chart.

“Good Afternoon, Mr… _Yaxley_ ,” he said, finding the name and nodding as he moved through the details. Reuben had looked through the sheets himself more than once. “I am Healer Boot, and it’s time to take your vitals.”

“No,” Yaxley responded immediately, shooting the healer a disinterested look as he pulled the covers around himself.

“Now, now,” the boy started. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Antonin snorted, and Reuben immediately sat himself up on the bed. “I said no,” he all but growled, losing patience by the second.

“I appreciate your reticence, Mr Yaxley, but looking at your chart you are due for discharge soon, if you want to leave we need to do this,” he said, sounding as if he was speaking to a small child.

Reuben was unmoved. “No fucking chance kid.”

“I’m sorry?” Healer Boot exclaimed taking a step back and placing a hand on his hip.

Yaxley had had quite enough of people he didn’t want to see entering his room. In one swift movement, he swung his feet down to the floor and drew himself up to his full height, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his side.

Healer Boot seemed to understand the potential danger he was in immediately. Yaxley’s shadow had barely fallen over him before he reached into his robes and pressed his panic button. Reuben stepped back as the Merlin be damned awful sound wailed through the corridors, and the double doors swung open again to reveal the Head Healer. The last time he and Yaxley had seen each other hexes had been exchanged.

“Ah, Mr Yaxley, we meet again.”

“Healer Pye,” Reuben replied.

“What seems to be the problem here?”

Reuben stalked towards Boot, and he ran off into the corner. “I _want_ Healer Granger,” he said through gritted teeth.

Healer Pye’s face hardened. “Hermione is indisposed.”

“Indisposed how?”

“That’s none of your business,” Healer Pye responded officiously and Reuben bit the inside of his mouth.

_He was going to make it his fucking business._

* * *

When four pm rolled around the next day, Reuben was blissfully alone in his room, readying himself to go home with the stuff that had been given back to him. He wasn’t paying attention to the clock, or at least he told himself he wasn’t, though he wasn’t surprised when Healer Granger walked in.

“Hello, Mr Yaxley,” she called brightly and stepped over to where he was and looked up expectantly.

He had thought about being standoffish with her after her disappearance yesterday, not that such a thing was her fault. But Reuben found that he couldn’t, not with her standing in front of him grinning. He had known she was tiny, but for the first time he fully registered their height differences, it was all he could do not to pull her under his chin.

“Decided to show up have you?”

She blushed though her eyes looked full of amusement. “I heard there was something of a disturbance yesterday,” she said in a teasing tone as she picked up some paperwork and began signing various pages.

Reuben gave her a look of complete innocence. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Is that so?” she replied, not looking up from her work. “Healer Boot suggested that you might have wished for me to be there, to perform the exam.”

Reuben snorted. “Healer Boot didn’t seem like a competent Healer to me.”

“Based on what?” Hermione snapped, and he hid his grin, it was fun to wind her up.

Reuben stepped forward until he was looming over her again. “Did you know he thought you had to leave your shirt on for an exam? I’m an important man, _Healer Granger_ ; I can’t afford to be worked on by the ill-informed.”

She tried to suppress her smile by biting her lip, but she wasn’t wholly successful. “I suppose not.” She looked at him for a moment and then seemed to remember her purpose. “Your discharge papers.”

As she handed them over Reuben reached for them, and their fingers met for just a moment. Her skin was so incredibly warm; it was no wonder she had gone into the healing profession, one touch had him feeling improved.

“Goodbye, Mr Yaxley,” she quietly uttered as she took a step back.

He was having none of that. He slung his bag over his shoulder before gripping her hip and pulling her forward. “Reuben,” he whispered in her ear, enjoying how he could feel her tremor under his hold. Her breath hitched, and he grinned widely. “I’m not your patient anymore.”


	18. SIDE B: TRACK 8 Dark Paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Originally posted as part of the Send Me a Ship ask on Tumblr, now cleaned up and expanded! Thank you for the prompt madeforuslcv

**SIDE B - TRACK 8**

[Hermione Granger x Sirius Black]

_There's no relief, I see you in my sleep_   
_And everybody's rushing me, but I can feel you touching me_   
_There's no release, I feel you in my dreams_   
_Telling me I'm fine_   
_Everytime I close my eyes_   
_It's like a dark paradise_   
_No one compares to you  
I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side_

Dark Paradise / Lana Del Rey [2012]

* * *

Hermione let her he knees give way and crumpled to the ground. After hour upon hour of fighting, she couldn’t find it within herself to keep upright any longer. Her breathing was heavy, and so was her heart. Using the last of her energy she dragged herself behind a robust looking column, hoping she wouldn’t be found there. At that moment Hermione wanted to hide from the Death Eater forces, certainly, but members of her own side were not welcome either. She wanted to be alone.   
  
As she leant back into the column and felt the once ornate relief patterns along its surface press into her shoulders, Hermione could hear spellfire and muffled curses, the pitched battle was still raging on around her, but it seemed distant now.

Hermione raised a shaking hand to her temple, and it came away bloody, _very_ bloody. By her foggy estimation, she had been hit with two spells at once, one of which she hadn’t heard of before. As the curse had fallen from the unknown wizard's lips, Hermione had stared at him with some surprise, up until that point he had not been a particularly worthy opponent. She was distracted for no more than a second, but that was all it took. As she tried and failed to block the first curse a second was shot in her direction from the other side of the room, Hermione hadn’t even known someone was there. She was becoming careless.

Slowly, Hermione inspected the rest of what she could see, marks and lacerations covered her arms and tell-tail dark patches on her chest suggested that it was worse under the bits that were covered by clothing. She let her head fall back. Almost as an afterthought, Hermione realised that she should probably be panicking, yet, she only felt relief. 

Their mission had been simple; they were to go in as part of an Auror hit squad to take down two of the remaining Death Eaters at large. Their intelligence had come from a proven and reliable source, and Hermione knew that the seven of them cleared for combat were some of the best available fighters, but she had seen enough in her short life to know that things weren’t always as they seemed.   
  
It appeared the Death Eaters had been doing a little recruiting of their own in the ten years since the final battle. How they had been doing so without the Ministry picking up on it was anyone's guess. The hows and whys didn’t matter to the team out in the field; the inevitable inquiry would come too late for them. Hermione and the others in the attacking team had followed all the protocols and had planned the raid down to the last detail. They just hadn’t been prepared for twenty or so opponents.

Hermione felt thick blood begin to trail down to her left ear and almost smiled in spite of herself. It was funny really, ridiculous even how she had ended up here. Once upon a time, Hermione would have said that joining the Aurors was the very last thing she wanted to do. Hermione had seen more fighting than she ever wanted to during the war, she wanted to do some good in the world. After leaving school she planned to become a healer, and she had nearly completed all of the training, but then, everything had changed.

Sirius had changed everything.

-/-/-/-

Sirius Black had come back after the war, spat out of the veil as unceremoniously as he had first entered it. To look at him, you wouldn’t have seen any changes that marked the passing of the years. But the man he was had altered. Time in Azkaban had made Sirius restless, foolhardy and desperate to experience his new-found limited freedom. Time behind the veil had made him reclusive, quiet and cynical.

Unbelievable though it had been to everyone at the time, it was Hermione that pulled him back to himself. After Harry, Remus, the Weasley’s and Kingsley had all failed to make an impact, Hermione had jokingly said that she would irritate Sirius into feeling better. She succeeded. She managed to drag him out to join them again, participate in what had become their strange family and start living.  
  
Hermione talked to Sirius about everything, she had intended to badger him into compliance but what she hadn’t counted on was Sirius responding, not with anger but with gratitude, happy to have a willing ear.

She started coming to Grimmauld more and more, and then, one evening as she was reading an article aloud, Sirius reached over and placed one of his scarred, tattooed fingers over hers. Hermione waited for a beat, then a beat more, then ten or so after that. Blood had rushed into her ears making it impossible to think until Sirius made to move his hand away, and suddenly, she was sure. Hermione’s hand shot out and grabbed his in mid-air, holding on tight and hoping to convey what she wasn’t sure she could put into words. If his smile were any indication, Sirius had understood.  
  
And so that was the beginning of them. A lot of people didn’t understand, some thought that it was passing interest on one or both of their sides, but Hermione knew better, this was her forever. Until it wasn’t.

Sirius Black was about as far from a white knight as it was possible to be, and yet Hermione felt he had swooped in and saved her all the same. Rescued her from the perilous fate over never being able to laugh until she fell over, or let go once in a while, or experience the wind in her hair and sweat on her brow. He saved her from herself.

Two years after he had returned from the veil, Sirius joined the Auror corps and was a standout success. People forgot how much action he had seen during the first war, and how bright he was. Sirius took to the drills like a duck to water, and soon had one of the highest apprehension rates amongst his peers as well as a reputation as a formidable dueller.    
  
But it wasn’t enough. Neither his skill or his fierce determination to win. It hadn’t been enough.   
  
Hermione had opened the door to Grimmauld Place a year ago, and instead of a happy, excited Sirius waiting to tell her all about his day, she found a resigned-looking Kingsley. Hermione had invited him in and led the way into the kitchen, all the while babbling about where the tea things were and had he tried the new hot chocolate recipe Remus had put together? Part of her must have known what the Minister was there for before he had even crossed the threshold.   
  
By the time Kingsley had managed to share all of the details, Hermione was curled up in his lap. He hadn’t wanted to tell her everything, but she had insisted. If Sirius had to live it, Hermione felt the least she could do was know what he had gone through. Kingsley made no protest to her need of comfort, he gripped her as tightly as he had back when they had been on the back of a Thestral together all those years before. Kingsley petted her hair and told her that it would be okay, that she should let out all of her grief, that it would make her feel better.   
  
She was too shocked even to cry.

It took three days, three days of silent, constant night, but Hermione finally gathered herself enough to go and see the body. Harry had been in her living room two days before, and he had practically begged Hermione to accompany him when he went to see his Godfather, but for the first time in their friendship, Hermione put herself first. She was immune to the sadness in Harry’s eyes because she couldn’t see past her own suffering.

Hermione had marched into the Ministry wearing black, a tradition that the wizarding world barely seemed to notice let alone understand, which was a relief in a way, as it became her unofficial uniform in the years that followed.

Sirius looked all wrong lying on a cold slab in the bowels of the Ministry. He was too animated in life to look right in death. His skin was too pale, his eyes too glassy. He was too still. It made Hermione’s skin itch. But she insisted on seeing him. Hermione knew she needed to see him to honestly believe that this was happening. After all, Sirius had died before, only that time there hadn’t been a body. There had been no proof. This time he was really gone.

People were respectful for about Hermione’s undeniable grief, for a while, but as the years faded away so did the willingness of her friends to tolerate her continued state of mourning. They wanted her to go out, to meet people, to build her life again. Hermione nodded along and said what she needed to make the conversations end as soon as possible.

At night she would close her eyes and map every detail of Sirius’ face, she would concentrate on the void, silence around her until she thought she could hear his voice. It wasn’t enough.  
  
Hermione announced her intentions to join the Aurors on a sunny afternoon in the Burrow’s kitchen, surrounded by her friends and loved ones. They all congratulated her warmly, barely able to suppress their palpable relief. Drinks were clinked, and congratulations were shared, and Hermione felt she played her part admirably. Only Harry looked at her with a worryingly knowing stare. Her oldest friend held her gaze for a few moments before looking at Ginny and then back at Hermione. She thought she saw the subtlest of nods. She probably imagined it, but she took it as understanding, maybe even permission.

-/-/-/-

Somewhere, far or near, Hermione could no longer be sure, there was the sound of crumbling bricks. She hoped all of their people had got out relatively unscathed, though she doubted it. Her hiding spot seemed to have held. She hoped the Death Eaters would be occupied for a few more minutes, she wouldn’t need more than that. Hermione could taste blood in her mouth, and her limbs felt hard and immovable. It wouldn’t be long now.   
  
It wasn’t exactly intentional for her to end up here, for all her grief she wasn’t exactly suicidal. For Hermione, taking her own life felt too much like cheating, it would have left too many people hurt. Going down while doing ‘the noble thing’ was different, people could and would get over that, at least, they had with Sirius, and all that had fallen before him.

Though everyone that knew her down to her school dormmates would have laughed, Hermione, for the first time in her life, threw herself, her very existence, on the will of fate. Somehow she must have done enough good in the world to get dealt the hand she wanted.

Hermione’s last coherent thought as she closed her eyes for a final time was that she hoped, with her whole being, that _he_ would be waiting for her on the other side.

-/-/-/-

Wherever Hermione was it was white, overwhelmingly so. The space around her didn’t seem tangible and yet not empty. It was a void and not all at the same time. She realised after a time that the pain she had been feeling was gone, she supposed that was nice.  
  
Hermione was trying to decide whether to walk on or stay still when a voice, a voice she would recognise anywhere, even in the midst of all this nothing stopped her.   
  
“Hello, Poppet.”


	19. SIDE B: TRACK 9 Jar Of Hearts

**SIDE B - TRACK 9**

[Millicent Bulstrode x Charlie Weasley]

_I know I can't take one more step towards you_   
_'Cause all that's waiting is regret_   
_Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore_   
_You lost the love I loved the most_   
_I learned to live half alive  
And now you want me one more time_

Jar of Hearts / Christina Perri [2010]

* * *

Millicent Bulstrode focused on the sound her patent leather heels were making in the quiet of the Ministry atrium and allowed the familiar noise to ground her. Her face was the perfect mask of indifference, the cherry on top of her armour of a polished outfit and the defiant set of her shoulders. As she walked passed one of the downstairs offices, she scanned her reflection in the glass door. She shimmied a little, allowing her dress to fall back into place and carried on down the corridor.

Millicent walked into work every day as if she were the undisputed queen of the world; it didn’t matter what she felt on the inside, she endeavoured to keep those _real_ feelings as hidden as possible. As soon as she poked a pointed peep toe out of her front door, she would screw up all of her negative emotions and crush them down inside herself. On the odd day where her normal routine didn’t work, she switched her usual deep red lipstick to a hue nearer a shimmering purple. Just like in nature, the colour warned potential predators around her to back the fuck up and stay out of her way.

Millicent artfully brushed the back of her hand through the front wave of her hair as she stood in line for coffee. The Ministry canteen beans were in a word awful, but the kiosk was handy, and it had the added benefit of being a beacon for some of the top tier bigwigs, all in all, it was a good place to be seen. The same barista she saw everyday flushed when he saw her join the queue before giving her a hesitant, shy wave. Millicent smiled back, in an aloof-ish way, at least that's how she hoped the smile came across, it was one she practised in the mirror often enough. She would never be rude, especially when faced with kind attention, but it was even more unwelcome than usual that day. She could allow no chink in her reserve, for that might allow the whole thing to crumble before she had achieved her object.

Millicent looked in her bag and pulled out her planner while she waited, though why was anyone's guess, she had the day memorized. Boring meetings and research for most of the morning but before, at 9 am a meeting with _him_. She hadn’t felt this nervous about anything since Hogwarts, and that was nothing short of miraculous as the school had been an unending nightmare for Millicent.

Nothing had gone to plan from when she turned up in the first year, that had been the problem. She had spent her early life dreaming of nothing but Hogwarts, and how it would be the perfect tonic to her fairly cloistered upbringing and yet when she got there she realised her face didn't fit. No, that wasn’t exactly right, even  _the great womaniser_ Blaise Zabini had once declared she had an _amazing_ face, in that smug way of his as if he were doing her a grand favour to even mention her in passing conversation. No, it was her _body_ that had been a disappointment. Millicent had never been aware of it before, growing up she had just liked her food a touch more than her sister, no one in her family had ever said anything about it. It came as something of a crushing shock to realise how marginalised she would become because of her curves. It was a toss-up most days as to whether teenage boys or the female counterparts could be the cruellest.

Millicent closed her planner with a barely audible sigh and shuffled forward as the line moved. She didn’t allow herself to reminisce often, to think about what she termed her _old life_ , but once the box was open, it was difficult to stuff all of the contents back in and get the lid shut as tightly as before. However, she did grant herself a small smile when she thought of what her thirteen-year-old self would say if she could see her now. Sadly, that poor girl had no idea.

Pansy may have spent the entirety of their school years bemoaning being invisible - mainly to Draco - Millicent had been unsympathetic, she knew there were worst things to be. For herself, she would have given almost anything to have fallen totally under the radar, unfortunately, she was too _big_ to do so.

She often wondered if she would have spent her entire life worried about a bit of excess weight around her middle if it hadn’t been for the war. In light of all that happened, those that had died, those that had never recovered, it seemed like such a stupid thing to care about it.

Millicent remembered walking past Lavender Brown in Hogsmeade two years after the final battle, she had been one of the prettiest girls in her year, and the buxom blonde marched down the cobbled road as if none of that had changed, despite the red, angry gash across her face. Millicent had admired Lavender’s tenacity and for the first time had found a grudging respect for the girl.

But the war had more effects on the children of Hogwarts school than leaving scars on faces. Following her well-overheard outburst, Pansy became ostracised. Millicent may not have _loved_ the girl, she hadn’t cared for any of her school friends that deeply, but Pansy was _familiar_ and present, and Millicent found she couldn't bear to see her in pain, and so she spent time with her when no one else in their circle would.

Time went on, and old wounds were forgotten. Harry Potter, the ever noble boy-who-lived, publically greeted Pansy in the street, suspiciously close to the cameras of a passing reporter and once again the post-war narrative list of heroes and villains changed. All was for forgiven. Pansy was allowed back in the fold again. But, she never forgot Millicent’s steady support when she’d had none and when she returned to the upper echelons of their society victorious and vengeful, Pansy had dragged Millicent with her. Her friend - for friends they were now - with the razor cut hair and tongue, did much to shut up any comments about Millicent suddenly being one of them and just like that, without diet or overhaul, she was accepted.  

Millicent had watched the metamorphosis of all of those around her with a kind of grim fascination, but more than anything, she wondered when hers would come. _Would she be forever cursed to linger in a reluctant to disband cocoon?_

Then, after a night out at a burlesque show, hen party entertainment for a very overwhelmed Daphne Greengrass, Millicent took the shackles off herself. She had watched dancers of all shapes and sizes enthral the besotted, and admittedly drunk, wizards around them and she had the most liberating thought of her entire life; _why not me?_

Millicent started to appreciate herself for who and what she was. Sure she was never going to be able to wear skinny jeans and a white t-shirt and look like a model like Tracy, or don billowing black dresses like Pansy but she sort of adopted her own style. Something that emphasised who she was. It meant everything had to be cinched, tailored to fit and laid over a good deal of structural underwear but she began to feel more like who she should have been from the start. In short, she stopped hiding.

The change was so gradual people didn’t notice it at first, Millicent hadn’t been bold enough to do a wholesale change all at once. She changed her knickers and then her shoes, it was like a secret she only shared with herself and she was amazed at how much those small, seemingly unnoticeable changes were, well, _noticed_. She was routinely asked if she had done something to her hair, or more bizarrely if she’d had a growth spurt.

That had been her three years ago, riding high on her new self-acceptance and moving into her own flat to be outside of her father's disapproving looks and her mother's pouting. Then, she had met _him,_ and her whole world had shifted again.

Millicent leaned forward to place her coins in the hands of the rather overwhelmed boy behind the counter and resumed her ‘murder walk’ to her office.

Looking back at it now the relationship was even more ridiculous when you considered that they were never supposed to meet.

After a long night on the town with her fellow Slytherin Survivors, as she called them in private, Millicent found herself at an upscale hotel in the city, standing in the back of a function room, watching as Neville Longbottom danced attendance on his new bride with no idea how they ended up there, they certainly hadn’t been invited. They had entered late, and by that time the drink had been flowing long and well and no one seemed to mind a few wedding crashers. School rivalries were seemingly forgotten as Pansy and Ron Weasley began arguing about something or other and Theo shyly approached Hermione Granger to tell her how much he admired her last published periodical.

 _He_ had approached her at the bar when Millicent had allowed her feet to rest as she propped her weight up on a stool and read the cocktail menu with concentration.

She couldn't remember him from school, though she had heard of him. Charlie Weasley _the errant son_ , so different from all of his brothers. He was broader, coarser, less refined and more interesting. Millicent had seen Bill, of course, he had been at the school a few times ‘pretty, for a blood traitor’ someone had said. William Weasley had an inkling of wildness to him, with his long hair and defiant earring but it was nothing like the ferocity that surrounded Charlie. Charlie didn’t have a vigour about him, he was more than that; he was freedom itself. He was the pureblood boy that had run away to look after dragons, that had come back to help slay a monster, that was staring across a bar like he had never seen anything quite like her before.

His eyes crinkled when he talked to her, and it was that small insignificant sign of something so captivating that enthralled her. He asked for her floo address, and Millicent gave it, happily. And that had been her first mistake.

Millicent walked into her office and shut the door pausing with her wand in her hand. It was tempting to add a locking spell, that was how much she wanted to be left alone today, but it would only mean more questions. Instead, she kicked off her shoes and pushed her toes into the soft leather of her desk chair as she tucked her legs underneath her, arranging the bottom of her dress so she was properly covered. Millicent had once thought it made her look childish, curled up like that. ‘Fuckable’ Charlie had called her once when he had come back for the weekend to find her in the same pose. Defaulting into it now, getting any comfort from it, it made her hate him.

Millicent sighed and laid her head back against the chair, she breathed in her coffee, fighting against clutching it to her chest.

Their affair, for she supposed that what it was, had been… _wasn't it hard to grasp at the words now you looked back in hindsight_ … Fun, passionate, life-affirming, a wholly new experience. Charlie seemed to live every day as if it was his last. After that first night, he called her and took her out for dinner, only three glasses of wine and he encouraged her to run through the pouring rain to get home. Which obviously led to sex, which was ridiculous for her, but with him she couldn't help but get swept away.

He made her laugh, he made her feel the freedom that ruled his life. She remembered his smile, the smell of his skin, the feel of his rough hands on her. With him she felt like a goddess, he often said so as he kneeled before her, ready to make an offering.

Millicent glanced at the clock on her desk and took a gulp of her drink, she had five minutes. She gave herself a little shake before dropping her feet back into her shoes and taking a look at her reflection. She wanted to arrive precisely two and a half minutes late. Not early, she didn’t want to appear too keen, and not too late, in case he perceived that she was doing it on purpose, just breezy on her way not a care in the world.

Millicent walked into the room and greeted a few of her colleagues, careful not to look at the head of the table. Charlie was back, permanently. He would be heading up the international relations sector of the Department of Magical Creatures and Millicent would be having some _professional_ dealings with him as part of her role in Law Creation and Enforcement, hence her invitation to this meeting. Though, she had already known he was coming.

The meeting started and Millicent dutifully picked up her quill and let her eyes glance to the front of the room for the first time, somehow even after all of her preparation it was still almost a shock to see him there. He looked as good as ever, better even as she hadn’t seen him for so long it was like her eyes had been starved of him. She felt his eyes on her and she subtly straightened her back and arranged her face into what she hoped looked like polite attention, _anything_ so he could not see that she was reciting the note he had sent over and over in her mind.

Mils,  
I’m coming back.  
_The Ministry sent me an amazing offer, and_ **_this time_ ** _I couldn’t refuse. I’ll be in London as early as the 19th. Missed me? Dinner? You pick the place.  
_Charlie

Millicent wasn’t sure if it was the brevity by which Charlie assumed he could breeze back into her life that made her so mad she almost set fire to the note by accident, or maybe, the expectation itself. Or, most likely, the way her heart fluttered even though she told herself this was not happening, not again, not ever.

The interminable meeting ended and Millicent had planned to be out of the room as quick as a flash, but, luck had never been on her side. A wizard from the records office stopped in front of her with a hundred questions about her new bill and how it would impact the current controls, Millicent listened quietly and tried not to yell at the man to read the fucking information sheet he had been sent before he finally ran out of hot air and left and she was there, alone, with _him_.

“Mils,” Charlie called after her, as she tried to make a quick exit. “Not so fast, how about lunch?”

How different his voice sounded. Millicent had heard it all through the meeting, every word scratching against the inside of her head, but it sounded different when it was directed at her, when it was meant for _only_ her.

Millicent spun on her heels and stared into his bright eyes and rugged face. _Was he really that insensitive the last time she had seen him?_ She asked herself hopefully, wondering if she could just forget it all and bump his shoulder, and head out for the offered sandwich. _Yes_ , her mind replied and her hand crunched into her notes.

Charlie wasn’t a bad person, on her good days Millicent doubted he had a bad bone in his body. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt anyone, but intentional or not he hadn’t crushed her. What he was, was self-involved.

The last time she had seen Charlie had been at her place, on one of the weekends that he had spent with her. Their time together had been sporadic and totally in his control. Millicent had woken up and frowned at the blinking of the clock on her bedside table, telling her how late in the day it was. As sleep had drifted away from her mind she felt him behind her, dragging a finger up and down her arm.

“This is a nice way to wake up,” she said huskily, thinking about nothing more significant than a possible mouth cleaning charm. His hand abruptly stopped, and Millicent had turned on her back to get a better look at him.

“I better get going,” he said and pulled away from her. The end of their time together always felt so abrupt.

She pouted, an expression she had once seen Astoria Malfoy nee Greengrass use to great effect on her now husband. “I thought we could get lunch?”

Charlie sighed. “Listen, babe, this, _us_ , I think you might be getting a bit too attached.”

“Attached?” she repeated, gathering the blankets to cover herself as she sat. Unconsciously knowing she would need to shield herself from the inevitable wounds.

“Yeah, see, I like you an all, a lot… but the reserve, it's _so important_ to me, I can’t be at the beck and call of someone else.”

“I see,” Millicent had forced herself to say, though she didn’t, not at all. She had done everything right. She had never once demanded too much or asked him for something he hadn’t been prepared to give, even though she had been desperate to.

He had kissed her on the nose, the condescending arsehole. “I knew you would.”

Charlie had jumped out of her bed and pulled on his jeans, his plans not changing at all despite how he had levelled a blow and left her bleeding, even now she wasn’t sure if he had even seen it. “So, we’ll cool it for a bit yeah? Maybe I’ll see you over Christmas?”

Millicent wanted to scream that it was _July_ and that was months away, and how it was cruel to hold out a crumb to someone when you had just that moment taken away their bread. But she didn't do any of that, to her shame she had nodded.

Then he had left. Breezed out of her life as wholly and suddenly as he had entered it. She hadn't heard from him that Christmas.

And now, she stood looking at him, in her best shoes as he shrugged it all off and tried to reinject himself back into her life, because it was easy, because she had made it so fucking easy. Just like that she realised that she didn’t have it in her to hate Charlie, maybe she never had, but she hated who she was when she was with him, and she wouldn’t go back to that. Not for anything.

“Sorry, Charlie,” she said, trying to sound as earnest as possible. “I’m just too busy.”

“Okay, sure,” he replied, hurrying to walk alongside her, “tomorrow then yeah?”

Millicent remembered how she had hugged his pillow after he had gone till long after his smell had vanished, how she had cried. How she had gotten so drunk and so sad that Pansy, a girl she wasn’t sure even knew how to initiate physical affection, had hugged her.

“No,” she said firmly, “not tomorrow, not ever.”

Millicent walked away focussing on every footstep so that she wouldn't stumble and ruin the effect. Maybe it was time to start returning Adrian Pucey’s owls? He was undoubtedly persistent and if what Daphne had said was true, hopelessly in love with her. A little adoration would feel wonderful about now. Adoration finally felt like what she deserved.


	20. SIDE B: TRACK 10 Love The One You're With

**SIDE B - TRACK 10**

[Lavender Brown x Cormac McLaggen]

_Turn your heartache right into joy_   
_Cause she's a girl and you're a boy_   
_Get it together come on make it nice  
You ain't gonna need any more advice_

Love The One You’re With / Stephen Stills [1970]

* * *

Lavender hoped her dress hadn’t become scrunched by the way she had pressed her back into the crumbling wall behind her. She was sure that the witch sitting on a shaded bench a few yards away, _Hermione Granger_ , would have performed the spell to refreshen chiffon with ease, but Lavender had never got the hang of it. There were a million things that Lavender wanted to master but hadn’t been able to, and a million more that Hermione had bested her in. To add insult to injury, most of them were beneath the other witch’s notice.

Lavender’s grip on her inexpensive champagne flute, holding inexpensive fizz, tightened as the couple in front of her unconsciously drifted closer together. Ron Weasley moved his knees ever so slightly towards Hermione’s, and his fingers tentatively landed on the full skirt of the other girls dress.

They seemed drawn together, Ron and Hermione, like magnets, like they always did. Lavender had even heard some faint cooing over the couple from passing professors. It made her want to vomit or scream. She couldn’t work out which would make her feel the most improved.

Lavender had moved away from the others hoping to escape. She wanted some reprieve from the nightmare of being around a happy mass of people sharing what they were planning to do with their lives. Instead, she had run into the two people she had least wanted to see, at least together.

Graduation was supposed to be _her_ thing. Lavender had survived the year under the cripplingly, barbaric rule of the Carrows, had survived Greyback’s savagery and after painful months of recovery, she had come back to Hogwarts and got passable exam results. This party was going to be her reentry into the world after she had been forced to shy away from it. Lavender had planned an entire look and on the day had pulled it off with perfection. Looking at the two people in front of her Lavender wasn’t sure why she had bothered.

Ron leaned forward and brushed one of his calloused thumbs - thumbs Lavender could remember the feel of - across Hermione’s cheek. Lavender drained the last of her glass, instantly regretting that she was now standing outside of the radius of the bored looking servers. They were currently contained on the distant courtyard wafting amongst the happy students.

Ron smiled, a little quirk on the side of his mouth, it must have been a reaction to something Hermione said, but Lavender was too far away to hear it. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to listen to all of their conversations, or never hear them speak again. Ron moved back, splaying his hand wider on Hermione’s lap and Lavender forced herself to look away. She might not have been as proficient as the witch yards away from her, but she could still throw a hex as good as anyone. No matter if it was deserved or not.

Lavender had been in love with Ronald Billius Weasley since their third year. Well, maybe not _in love_ , but she had noticed him then as more than just one of the boys that took up space in the Gryffindor common room. Ron seemed to get taller every year, but that was the first time Lavender could remember it having such a transformative effect on his body. They had happened to be heading out of the common room at the same time one morning, and Ron had held the door open for her to walk through. Lavender had looked up at him as she ducked under his outstretched arm and even though it was such a small thing, it made her feel noticed, and dainty. She had also had the distinct impression that as she sashayed down the corridor ahead of him, Ron had been watching her. It was a wonderful feeling, and that first taste had made her crave more.

Really though, it was during their fifth year when she knew that she loved him. However, it was also the year that Lavender realised that at least part of Ron’s continued - off and on - interest in her, was because it made Hermione jealous.

Lavender looked back over at the shaded spot and forced herself to face the reality of her situation. Hermione’s head was now resting on Ron’s shoulder, and his fingers were playing with the ends of Hermione’s ridiculous hair. Even from a distance, Lavender could see how careful Ron’s touches were, how special. He had never been _gentle_ with her. In all of the instances where they explored the more physical side to their attraction, there had been no touches that could have been mistaken for worship. Nothing like the look that was currently on Ron’s face as he regarded Hermione. It was as if he couldn't believe his luck. Lavender certainly could not believe hers.

Sure, when Lavender had taken off her shirt for the first time - when they had found an abandoned broom cupboard they were sure no one would find them in - there had been wonder and a little awe in Ron’s face. At the time Lavender had read too much into it. With the gift of experience, hindsight revealed Ron’s zeal was only a representation of how any teenage boy would react upon getting their first real sight of body parts that up until that moment had been the reserve of fantasy.

Lavender pulled a compact out of the side of her skirt and glanced at herself impassively in the tiny mirror. At least her hair was still perfect. Her soft blonde waves fell artfully down her back, with one side held up by a beautiful, and utterly fashionable slide. And yet, all of that perfection hadn’t mattered.

Lavender had been waiting for Graduation since she had returned to Hogwarts. She had thought of it as her big chance. Granger had come back to school, but the boys hadn’t. Lavender had known they would come back for the remaining member of their little gang graduating, and she was going to show Ron _everything_ he had been missing.

Lavender had walked across the stage in slow, measured steps and looked around with a winning smile that she knew made the best of her features just as the scroll was pushed into her hands. But Ron hadn’t been looking. He was watching something over her shoulder attentively as he carried on conversations with the small cluster of guests around him. Really Lavender had known what she would be confronted with when she followed his gaze, and yet when she turned and saw Hermione looking windswept and freckled standing in line, bouncing impatiently, she still felt the stab of rejection as hard as if it had been a complete surprise.  

She hated her. She hated him. She hated herself.

Just as Lavender began to debate throwing herself into the lake, she was joined by another reveller that had also walked further from the maddening crowd, though this one seemed much happier than her if the bright smile on his face was anything to go by.

“Cormac,” she greeted with a little nod and took the refreshed glass he offered her with a soft thank you, all the while wishing it was something infinitely stronger.

“You looked like you could use a drink,” Cormac responded, and Lavender shrugged. There he was, subtle as a bludger.

Cormac seemed to pick up on her mood, miraculously given his legendary self-centred nature, though, rather than walking away, Cormac settled next to her along the short wall and began sipping his own drink.

Lavender spied him out of the corner of her eye and tried not to smile wryly at herself. Only this morning she would have thought Cormac approaching her with a drink was the beginning of one of her dream scenarios. She had imagined endless variations of good looking wizards approaching her, and Ron stealing in to stake his claim before she got away. Now that she knew she could have tackled Shacklebolt in the middle of the marquee and still got no reaction from Ron, it only made her want to laugh bitterly.

After the war, Cormac had been one of the many students that had come back to the school to fix the gaps in their education. He may not have been there for the final year under the Carrows, but the battle had affected them all. Even Oliver Wood had returned for a few weeks. Some weren’t seeking education, merely happier memories to rid themselves of the bad.

Lavender looked across at the red-head boy steadily wrapping Hermione’s curls around his fingers and then back at her silent guest. In many ways, she knew Cormac was a much bigger catch than Ron. He had blond hair with a delightfully crumpled wave and deep blue eyes that made him look almost Roman. His father was well connected, and his family were regarded as one of consequence. Cormac had long been considered one of the hottest wizards they went to school with by anyone's measure, but unfortunately for Lavender, he had never touched her heart.

“It won't last you know.”

Cormac’s voice, laced with his usual unshakable confidence, dragged Lavender from her internal game of increasing ire and she turned to him, glad of someone to unleash it on.

“And what would you know about _serious_ relationships?”

Cormac snorted, and it made Lavender want to slap his face. “I know enough,” he replied with a shrug and then he glanced over at Hermione with a faraway look that Lavender couldn’t interpret.

“What? You think Ron’s not good enough for her?” She spat. “She’s lucky to get anyone's attention - the stuck up cow.”

“No,” Cormac replied lightly, with a quirk of his lips that Lavender just knew meant he was dying to laugh at her. “I just don't see them working out.”

It was Lavender’s turn to scoff. She had chased after Ronald Weasley for years, making herself available to him whenever he wanted. It had never mattered. Hermione had done absolutely nothing to cultivate or deserve his affection, and yet Ron was still besotted.

“Tell someone who cares,” she said flippantly and looked down to inspect her glass, grimacing at the fingerprints she could see all over the bottom.

“Given that you’ve been standing here, glaring at them for twenty minutes, I rather think I am.”

Lavender wrestled with herself, and the overwhelming desire to tell Cormac exactly where he could shove his champagne flute. But he suddenly laid a hand on her bare arm and squeezed gently.

“Look, I didn’t come over here to start an argument. However badly you seem to want one. They’re calling us to dinner, do you want to go in together?”

Lavender instinctively looked over to the courtyard, and as Cormac had said the vast majority of guests were now heading towards the main entrance hall. Parvati was talking to Percy Weasley of all people, Merlin she must have been bored. She would have to apologise to her friend later for all but abandoning her.

Lavender resolutely did not look back over to the bench as she gripped Cormac’s arm in return. “Of course, I would like that.”

* * *

Lavender looked around the ballroom and wondered whether her fifteen-year-old self would have ever believed she would grow up to think there was such a thing as _too much sparkle_.

The wedding she had been all but dragged along to was the most blatantly pretentious event Lavender had ever witnessed, and judging by the decor of the room they had been ushered into after collecting a drink, the reception was going to be even more so.

An hour later, Lavender dutifully, if unenthusiastically, raised her glass as the new Mr and Mrs Weasley entered. She watched as Pansy Parkinson, as was, sashayed into view, looking down her nose as if she were a queen among serfs and Lavender almost wished, just for a single moment, that Ron had married Granger. At least the wedding would have been simple. Not anymore tasteful than the current monstrosity, but on a smaller scale.

Lavender had spent the week before the wedding practising polite if non-comital comments she could offer when the situation called for it, practise she was grateful for when she was sat on a table next to a distant Weasley cousin who gushed about everything from the linen to the shoes Ron had on.

Lavender spent most of her time glancing towards the front of the room where Parvati, resplendently dressed in a beautiful sari, was sat with Percy Weasley. It was the most animated she had ever seen Ron’s older brother, and Lavender couldn't fault his attention to her best friend. Percy seemed to almost fall over himself to pass Parvati dishes or fill up her water glass. Lavender supposed in a new set of dress robes Percy even looked passable; it just wasn’t the match she had expected her friend to make. As she watched Percy lean down to offer Parvati an extra potato, it was a crippling reminder of what could have been. If she and Ron had made it Parvati and she would have been dating brothers. Something they had laughingly wished for when they first met.

“Well, here we are again.”

Cormac breezed over to her table, looking better than Lavender had even seen him, in crisp black dress robes that must have been brand new and tailored just for him.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” he said with a smirk as he elegantly dropped into the empty seat next to her. After the coffees had been cleared away, people had gone off to mingle until the dancefloor opened. Lavender had been debating whether or not to flit off into the night.

“You did,” Lavender conceded with a shrug. Cormac had, of course, predicted that Ron and Hermione had not been fated to be together forever, and he had been proved right less than six months later when Hermione moved out, and Ron moved on.

Pansy Weasley was stood to the side of the ballroom proferring a menu at a caterer. She pointed at several items viciously, and even from the other side of the room Lavender could tell she wasn’t happy.

“Plotting her death too?” Cormac asked with amusement, and Lavender found it within herself to laugh in reply.

“No. I was just thinking Ron might have his true Karma now.”

Cormac smiled, “For what is worth I do think this one will last.”

They both watched as Ron approached Pansy and seemingly had no reaction to her growing frustration. He simply grabbed his new wife’s hand before stealing her away.

A short burst of noise from through the adjoining doors let them know that the band was starting up and Lavender gave the exit another fond look.

“Can I have this dance?” Cormac asked, no doubt having seen her intention.

Lavender weighed her options. Much as she had no real desire to be there, she knew her mood would not improve by being home alone with a bottle of wine and a romance novel. She put her bag down on the table decidedly and winked at Parvati who was raising her eyebrow at her from the bar.

“I would love to.”

* * *

Lavender watched with a kind of bored attention as the former king of school bullies, Draco Malfoy, led an inelegant Hermione Granger - or Hermione Malfoy now she supposed, unless Granger had kept her own name - around the room for their first dace.

Malfoy leant forward to whisper something into his new wife’s ear, and Hermione blushed. Like actually blushed, like the coy school girl Lavender had never known her to be. If pressed, Lavender would have said that Hermione was incapable of blushing, for fear that the action would pull blood away from her precious brain, but now there was clear evidence to the contrary.

Hermione looked up at Draco with unmasked affection, and Lavender felt her throat close. She might not have liked Granger, she might not have understood the girl _at all_ , but she knew what love looked like, and Hermione was in it, up to her neck.

Suddenly everything Cormac had said before made sense. How Ron and Hermione would never have worked, and why the play by play running its course in front of her did.

The sad and lonely Malfoy of the end of the war had been replaced with a man who only showed little flashes of his meaner self, the self he had inhabited at all times when they were younger. Of course, he had a champion now.

Lavender let her head fall back on her chair and gazed around the room, coming to a stop when she could see a cluster of Malfoy’s family at the far end of the hall. Lavender knew she would never find it within herself to _like_ Hermione, but she almost loved her for the look of repressed pain currently dancing across Lucius' face as his new daughter in law twirled around the room.

Lavender saw Harry Potter, standing at the bar with his own look of bemused disgust directed at the couple. His new wife standing at his side, could not have looked more delighted.

Lavender continued her perusal of the rest of the guests and belatedly realised that she hadn’t been looking for Ron. She supposed that was due in part to having seen him so much recently.

Parvati had agreed to marry Percy Weasley, for reasons Lavender was still unsure of, and as such, she and her former boyfriend had been thrown together often during the planning. They were to be the head bridesmaid and best man respectively. Lavender had realised with a great deal of guilt that a year or so ago she would have been thrilled at the prospect, not for the sake of her friend, but because she would have taken it as some divine proof that she and Ron were _meant_ to be together.

Now she was happy to leave him and his untucked shirts in the care of his bossy, shrill wife. What Ron saw in Pansy she had no idea, but honestly, Lavender no longer cared.

When she managed to tear her eyes away from Lucius and Hermione as they performed the most awkward dance of all time, Lavender continued to glance around the room, cataloguing where everyone was before she got up and started to mingle. She might not have been looking for Ron, but she was, she realised with some amusement, idly tracking Cormac.

Cormac looked different to when she had seen him recently. His blond hair was longer and styled more casually, and it almost looked windswept. Instead of the black robes that he seemed to favour whenever she saw him at one of these events, he was wearing a set in dark blue that set off his features perfectly.

“We meet again,” he said as he appeared her and Lavender did not hide her smile. She hadn’t been watching his approach from the corner of her eye, and when he finally made it to her side, she pulled herself up in her seat to set her figure off to the best advantage.

“We do,” she replied with a smile, “Though, I’m not entirely sure why I was invited.”

Cormac smiled. “Well, I know I was, and why Krum’s over there looking depressed. In a word Draco. I would never have thought his name was so accurate, but he’s as possessive as an actual dragon. I believe he has invited every man who was ever within ten feet of Granger to make a point.”

Lavender looked around the room until she saw Viktor Krum who was standing with an enthusiastic Oliver Wood. Lavender wouldn’t have said he seemed depressed, though he did glance over at the ‘happy couple’ a few times.

“You're heartbroken I imagine?” Lavender said with just a hint of a question that Cormac obviously picked up on as he leant forward in his seat.

“No, not really. Hermione was just a girl I liked while I was at school. Anyway, this gentleman prefers blondes,” he said with a wink.

Lavender eyed him incredulously. “Was that your extremely inelegant way of making a pass at me?”

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“Has it worked?”

Lavender giggled, she couldn’t help herself, and for once there was nothing affected about her laughter. “Maybe,” she answered coyly, and twirled her extremely expensive champagne flute, containing extremely expensive fizz, between her fingers.

Cormac smiled and dropped a hand onto her forearm, leaving spine-tingling trails with his fingers. “Well, as we have established that the happy couple won’t miss us, shall we scarper? Would you like to go for a drink with me?”

Lavender glanced into her lap and looked at the way the crisp blue of Cormac’s robes complimented the blush pink of hers and smiled. “Cormac, that sounds lovely.”

* * *

Cormac had entered the Malfoy wedding and done the social lap as he was required to do. He had been to so many of these things over the last couple of years that he almost had it down to a fine art. He made sure he went over to congratulate the happy couple during the drinks hour before dinner. Cormac always liked to get it out of the way so he could disappear later if he so chose. However, on that evening he took great pains to lean in when he kissed Hermione on the cheek and made sure his earnestness was apparent when he told her she was the most beautiful bride he had ever seen.

Malfoy showed his discomfort by closing the gap between himself and his new wife and slid a pale hand around Hermione’s slim waist. His reaction was a wonderful treat and something Cormac knew he would play over in his mind again and again. If he had liked the boy at all, he would have told Malfoy he had nothing to worry about. Hermione was no more interested in him than she was in anyone that wasn’t her husband. But she was undoubtedly beautiful.

Cormac was surprised to find he was a little glum to see Granger getting married. She would never have wanted him, but he supposed he must have been harbouring the smallest of hopes while she was still single.

Cormac hadn’t lied when he had spoken to Lavender at Graduation. He had known Hermione and Ron wouldn’t last. And while he never thought he would be able to swoop in and be Hermione’s white knight, there was the dream that someday - in the distant future - that they might have bumped into each other, in a shop or the bank or some other inane place. Enough time would have gone by, and he would have been able to ask her out, and tried again.

But that little feathered hope was grounded when Cormac saw the way Hermione looked at Malfoy. It was intense her gaze, and it had confirmed every suspicion Cormac had ever had about her passionate nature. Sadly.

After dinner, Cormac settled with his back against the wall and took stock of the guests. He had seen Lavender Brown during the service, walking in with her friends in an appropriate though formfitting gown of light pink. He had also noticed her looking at him during the evening and honestly it was a bit of a feather in his cap to get her attention.

Lavender was hotter than fire though she had always seemed like a bit of a bitch. Cormac looked back over at Granger, _Malfoy_ he corrected himself, and laughed as she rolled her eyes at something Pansy Weasely said. Maybe a bit of a bitch was his type.

Cormac pushed himself off the wall and ran a hand through his hair to artfully disrupt his curls. It was time to leave, and he had no intention of doing so alone. 


End file.
